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Moon and Storm - Part Three

The next morning, Moon packed her bag with two lunches as usual, but she also threw in her binder and a history book. When her mother saw her heading for the door, the woman stopped her. “Where are you heading off to?”

“I was going to go to the library to do some studying.” She motioned to where the twins were, fighting with play swords and making a raucous. “I can’t focus here.”

Her mother seemed relieved and pleased. “Alright. Just stay away from the forest, and be back in time for dinner.”

“I promise, Mama!” She slipped out the door and headed off through the cul-de-sac, aiming for the library. She waited until she was well out of sight of her entire neighborhood before she turned to the forest. In the distance, she could already see Fox and Storm waiting for her, just at the edge of the woods, though she hadn’t told them where to find her. She smiled wide and ran for them, and the boy stepped back and opened his arms.

“You came!” he exclaimed as she ran to him, throwing her arms around his neck. He held her tightly, and it was only when the deer urged them both away from the forest’s edge that they released each other and let Fox lead them deeper into the woods.

“I did my best. My mother thinks I went to the library.”

“Will she be able to find out you lied…?”

Moon shook her head. “I don’t think so, not if I work it right.” She threaded her fingers through his. “Would you show me something, Storm?”

“Of course. Anything you’d like.” He smiled wide. “The whole forest is yours. Just say the word and I’ll take you there.”

But again, Moon’s face must have given her away, because after a moment his smile faded. “You want to go there, don’t you?”

“I think I do.”

He sighed heavily, but started to walk in a new direction now, and Moon was sure he was taking her where she wanted to go. She wanted to see where Cory Larson had supposedly drowned.

“I don’t know why you’re so obsessed with him,” Storm said. “You didn’t know him, you said so yourself. You just know of him.”

“Maybe. I don’t know how to explain it. I think that’s why Fox brought me out here—I think I’m supposed to help him in a way that you and she weren’t able.”

Storm looked at her with confusion. “But he’s dead. How can you help him?”

“I don’t know. Maybe his spirit isn’t at rest. Maybe it needs to be put to rest. Or maybe there’s something else I’m supposed to be doing. I just know that I need to see it with my own eyes.”

Grudgingly, the boy accepted this, and the rest of their trek was taken in near silence. At first, the boy would try to break the silence from time to time to explain something about the area to Moon, but the closer they got to the other side of the forest, the closer they got to Beaverton, the quieter he got, until eventually he stopped talking altogether. The last half hour they walked in complete silence, save for the rustle of the wind through the trees. Finally, they came upon the back end of the same stream he had shown her before. This was far away from where the frogs were playing, however, and this part of the forest felt darker somehow, almost tainted. She could feel the death in this place, and the trees themselves seemed to warn her to turn away while she still had the chance.

She almost did just that, and she even found herself reaching for Storm’s arm, to stop him in his tracks, but before she could open her mouth to suggest they abandon this foolish mission he stopped of his own accord and pointed with a shaking hand to a particularly wide part of the stream.

“That’s where I found his body,” Storm said.

Moon released his arm and stepped away from him, inching closer to where he pointed. The stream in this space was rockier than other parts, and a large boulder split the water down the middle.

“He had struck his head on the boulder. I don’t know if that was the hunter’s fault or if he fell, but the hunter held him underwater until he stopped struggling. When I got here, he was already dead. The whole stream had turned red with his blood.”

Moon looked around for any sign of a body, but there was nothing to even indicate that a death had occurred. “You said you released him back to the forest. Where did you do that?”

“Right here,” he said, pointing again to the stream. “I told the forest it was time to reclaim him, and his body fell to ashes and drifted away in the winds. He’s all around us, here. And he’s safe, and free now. All people and all creatures are free in the forest. We take care of our own, here.”

Moon knelt beside the stream and rested her palm on the thick boulder. A shockwave of pure fear coursed through her system, and she had to jerk away, her heart catching in her throat. “I can feel it,” she whispered.

“Feel what…?”

“What he felt before he died.” She stood, her face scrunched up, and Storm’s eyes widened as he saw the tears forming in hers.

“It’s okay…” he whispered, opening his arms for her. “He’s not in pain anymore.”

“Maybe not, but he was in so much pain when he died. There’s so much fear in this place. Terror. How can anyone live with that much fear?”

There was a pregnant pause, before the boy squeezed her tighter and buried his face in her neck. “You’d be surprised what a person can live with when they have no other choice.”

Moon shook her head. “Take me away from here.”

“I thought you needed to help him somehow?”

“I do, but I’ve done all I can do here. Now I need to get out of here. Please.”

The boy nodded without hesitation and grabbed her hand, leading her away without so much as a single glance behind them.

~*~

It was late afternoon by the time they reached the forest’s edge once more, and darkness was fast approaching. Moon found herself reluctant to leave. She knew she had to get back home, but she had the most awful feeling that something was happening that would change the course of both of their lives forever.

Storm seemed to feel it, too, because he held tightly to her and wouldn’t let go. “Do you have to leave?” he asked, his body shaking slightly and his eyes a little wider than they should be.

“I have to get back to my mother or I could get in trouble. I’ll come back tomorrow, I promise.”

But Storm shook his head. “No, you won’t. The forest never lies. I won’t see you tomorrow.”

Moon stepped away, and the boy wrapped his arms around himself and eyed the forest floor.

“What do you mean?” she asked.

“Tonight is the last night I’ll see you in these woods.”

“No,” she protested, but beside them Fox pawed at the ground, and Moon knew he spoke the truth.

“I think we’ll see each other again,” he continued. “But by then, everything will be different.”

She closed the distance between them once again and wrapped her arms around his neck, and did something she had not yet done before. She kissed him, deeply, her lips connecting with his in a manner fitting of the most elaborate of fairy tale love stories. He held her tight and kissed her in return, his fingers running up and down the spine of her back, but when he finally pulled away, she could see the sadness she was leaving behind in his eyes.

“I love you,” she whispered. “King of the Forest.”

“I love you too, girl of the Moon.”

Fox stepped forward and nudged Moon away, nodding her head in the direction of the houses, and reluctantly, Moon started the long trudge home. She realized when she was halfway across the forest that she’d forgotten to eat her lunch, and hadn’t given the boy his. But when she turned back to the line of trees, he was gone, and so was Fox. Moon was alone, the empty forest to one side, and the lonely houses to the other. She sighed heavily and continued her walk home. At least at home she could curl up in her bed and come up with a plan for her next steps. Hopefully.

Moon’s mother was quiet as Moon slipped in the back door and put her bookbag down on the kitchen chair. The woman was tinkering around the kitchen, finishing off what smelled like a large pot of spaghetti, and Moon slipped into another chair and watched her work for a few minutes.

Finally, Moon’s mother broke the silence.

“How was the library?” she asked.

Instantly, Moon felt that something was wrong, but she swallowed hard and answered anyway. “It was alright. It was quiet.”

“Was it?” her mother asked. “That’s strange. It wasn’t so quiet when I was there earlier today. I’d say around noon? They had a big book fair happening. I think it was the loudest I’ve ever heard it…your brothers had a blast.”

Moon swallowed hard and sank a little in her seat. “Mama…”

“Save it, Moon. I know where you were. I don’t like it when you lie to me.”

“Mama, you don’t understand, I was—”

“Do you know what else happened today, Moon?” Her mother turned and faced her for the first time, meeting her eyes with disappointed anger. “There was a special on the news. It was just an hour ago, actually. Cory Larson, that boy I was talking to you about?”

Moon paled and clenched her hands in her lap. She felt incredibly small all of a sudden. “Did they find his body…?”

But her mother simply shook her head. “No, they didn’t. But you already know that, don’t you Moony?”

Even the use of her most hated nickname didn’t seem to strike her this time. The awful feeling in the pit of her stomach was growing twisted and knotted, and everything felt like it was closing in on her. “Mama?”

“They had his school picture up, Moony. And do you know what he looks like? He looks like the boy I saw you kissing in the forest just now. You knew where he was this whole time and you repeatedly lied to me!”

“I didn’t! I swear I didn’t!”

Her mother shook her head and turned away. “Go to your room, Moon. You’re grounded.”

“Mama, what did you do!? Did you tell anyone? You can’t have!”

“I called the police, is what I did. If we’re all very lucky, they’ll find him tonight.” She lowered her voice, speaking almost to herself. “I can’t believe you, Moon. I can’t believe you’d do a thing like this.”

Moon jumped to her feet and ran to the back door, shoving the sliding glass open before her mother could stop her. She flew off the back deck and ran through the field behind her house, her heart pumping in her chest, the blood rushing in her ears. She could hear her mother running after her, the panicked woman’s voice calling to her, but there was only one thing on Moon’s mind: she had to get to Storm.

She had to get to him before the police found him.

She could hear when the sirens arrived, and knew there wasn’t much time to get to him, but for that period of time everything seemed to slow, to calm. Her focus became clear, and she somehow knew that she could do it. She could reach the basin, reach Storm’s alcove, before the cops would find them.

And then, they would run. Together.

~*~

Dark clouds had rolled in, covering the forest in a blanket of rain as thunder crashed through the trees. Moon lost her footing more than once in the dense forest floor, but her dread urged her onward. When she reached the top of the hill, she could see Storm curled up in his little den, watching the sky, but Fox was nowhere in sight. He shoved himself to his feet when Moon called his name, and there was a note of fear on his face as he caught her at the bottom of the basin, before she could slip on the wet earth.

“My mother saw you,” she started, but the boy inhaled sharply before she could continue and he lost his balance, nearly falling to the side. Moon grabbed his arms to keep him upright, and he met her eyes.

“What do you mean?”

“She said she recognized you, that you were on some news show. She called the cops…they’re coming to find you and take you home.”

His eyes shot open wider and a whimper escaped from high in his throat. “They can’t. They can’t.”

“Where’s Fox? We have to get out of here before they get to you!”

“Fox left me…she said it was time for me to leave the forest…” His voice wavered as his gaze drifted to the side, and she could see him starting to slip further into his own mind as the panic took over.

Moon grabbed both of Storm’s hands and forced him to look at her. “Storm, the police are coming, and the king of the forest needs to make a decision. What are we going to do? Where are we going?”

The words spurred him to action, and he took her hand and ran through the forest, away from the direction of Moon’s house. The officers were close behind them, and she could hear the call of the police dogs, but with her heart beating so fast in her chest there was little time to think of their pursuers. It would only paralyze them with fear. When the boy stumbled, Moon helped lift him to his feet, and when she tripped, he paused to heft her upright again. It wasn’t long before Moon was horribly lost, and even the boy himself didn’t seem to recognize this part of the forest, but they didn’t stop running. Not even to catch their breath.

When they could go no further, their legs like jellied eels refusing to carry them even one more step, Moon finally let herself collapse to her knees.

“Do you think we lost them?” the boy asked, his voice suspended in the air, barely audible over the din of the stormy night. But Moon could only shake her head.

“I don’t know.”

Another stifled whimper came from somewhere high in the boy’s throat, and she turned then to catch his eyes. “Storm, I have to know…what happened to Cory Larson?”

The boy shook his head violently. “He drowned in the stream, murdered by his own kind.”

“And where did you come from?”

He took one shaking breath and lowered his head until his forehead was pressed against the earth. “I rose from the same waters. Fox called to me, and I came. She said the forest needed a protector.”

The crunch of leaves nearby drew both of their attentions, and Moon expected to see the police surrounding them, but it was only the deer. Even in the dark of the night, Moon could see her clearly, her tawny fur seeming to glow with the brightness of the summer sun, and Moon had to avert her eyes so she wouldn’t be blinded.

“Fox,” the boy whispered, but the deer seemed nearly to laugh gently at the both of them.

Your time in this forest has come to an end, she said, her voice flowing to them on the breezes of the wind.

Storm must have heard this message as well, because he looked up with widened eyes. “But the forest needs protection!”

The forest has protected itself for thousands of years, and will protect itself for thousands more. It is time you step down from your throne, little king, and let the forest protect you, as it has always tried to.

Moon could hear the approach of voices, and she reached over and threaded her fingers through the boy’s, holding tightly to him. “Fox, what do we do? The police will take him out of here.”

Let them. It’s time for the human child to return to his people, and so it is time for you, as well.

Moon looked up, but the deer was gone, disappearing with a gust of wind in the same manner in which she’d arrived, and all Moon could do was cling to Storm as the voices grew even nearer. “I think I see something! Through here!”

Moon grasped the boy around the shoulders and pulled him up until he was resting on his knees. At first, he would not meet her eyes, but when the police began pouring out of the trees he finally looked up, caught her gaze, and whispered his first words to her that came not from Storm, but from Cory. “Don’t let them give me back to my dad.”

The police descended on the two of them, arms wrapping around Moon from behind as another cop took hold of Cory, and he let out an ear-piercing shriek of terror. “Moon! Moon! Don’t let them give me back to him, Moon! MOON!”

~*~

The two teens were separated and marched out of the forest, back in the direction they’d come from. After his mild panic attack, Cory had gone silent, and he didn’t struggle even as they walked through his basin clearing, past his alcove of rocks. He seemed to shiver slightly in the cold, any power he’d had over the storm and the forest stripped from him the moment Fox turned him away, but he didn’t resist their captors, save for putting up the barest of fights as they dragged him past the line of the trees and out into the clearing.

Ahead, Moon could see her mother, concern on the woman’s face, and for the first time it looked to Moon as though her mother was beginning to age. She’d always seemed ethereal, halted in time by some mystical force that motherhood had bestowed upon the woman, but the thick creases from worry left in the corners of her eyes and across her forehead had broken that spell, and Moon could see the woman’s true mortality.

The officers who held Cory took a detour around the side of Moon’s house, but the man who led Moon forward took her straight to her mother’s arms. “She’s just fine,” he said, but whether Moon’s mother even heard his words was a complete tossup. She wrapped her arms tightly around Moon’s neck and cried against her daughter’s shoulder, whispering breathily through her sobs about her fears, how worried Moon had made her. Empty threats of grounding were thrown around, but Moon didn’t care about them. She held her mother in return and gave the woman everything she thought might be comforting.

When her mother had finally composed herself enough to pull away and sniffle, Moon turned to the officer.

“I think Cory’s father tried to kill him. That’s why he was hiding in the woods. You can’t send him back there.”

A concerned frown crossed the middle-aged man’s face, and he nodded once. “We’ll make sure your friend is safe.”

“You have to promise you won’t send him back to that man!”

He hesitated for too long, before nodding. “We’ll do our best,” he said, and then he turned and walked off. Moon wanted to run after him, to shake him until he agreed to protect Cory, but she knew it would do no good. She had to lay her trust in the forest that it had made the right decision. And if it hadn’t…then she’d find Cory again, and this time nobody would ever be able to drag them home.

She looked to the left, just over her shoulder, deep into the heart of the trees in the distance. She could see the deer standing just at the edge of the tree line, and she pulled away from her mother. The woman followed, grasping for her daughter’s wrist, but Moon was focused solely on the deer.

“He better be safe!” she called. “He better not get hurt! Or it’s on your head, for turning him away!”

Moon’s mother smoothed a hand over her daughter’s hair. “Moon, you’re yelling at a deer.”

“Fox knows what I’m saying.” With that, she turned toward the house and let her mother bring her inside.

~*~

Days passed, and slowly turned into weeks, and Moon watched the news carefully for any word of Cory Larson. There were headlines about the lost boy who’d been found after more than a month of living in the forest, and then the papers turned sour. Stories of abuse began to surface. An esteemed officer of the Beaverton Police Department was arrested for attempted filicide. Cory Larson, the papers said, would be living with a maternal aunt from now on.

It was a long while before he was ready for visitors, but when his aunt called Moon’s mother, neither of them hesitated. Moon packed a sandwich, despite the confused look on her mother’s face, and eagerly climbed into the passenger side of the car. She was too excited for small talk, and eventually her mother gave up and turned on some music. The drive around the forest to Beaverton was a long one, a good forty-five minutes of straight highway, the trees to one side and open pastures to the other, but finally, they arrived.

Cory’s aunt lived on a farm just outside of Beaverton. Moon could see the houses and gas stations and the spire of a church building just up the road, but they turned well before they reached the town limits, onto a dusty driveway that led up to a two story farmhouse in need of a fresh coat of paint. A woman with sun-spotted skin, a bright smile, and a thick drawl met them on the porch, taking first Moon’s mother’s hand in both of her own and then Moon’s.

“And you must be the girl who found him. He’s been mighty excited to meet y’all, I must say!”

But the ghostly face that appeared behind the screen door didn’t look all that excited, and Moon nearly stepped back a foot. Cory let his eyes fall to the ground as he pushed the screen door open and shuffled out. He was somehow both taller and smaller than Moon remembered, or maybe that was just the way he held himself, hands tucked deep into his jean pockets and shoulders slumped inward. His aunt held out an arm and he allowed himself to be pulled close, but he still didn’t look up to meet Moon’s eyes.

“No need to be shy now, Cory. They came all this way to see you. Why don’t you say hello?”

Slowly, Cory raised his head, until his gaze finally caught Moon’s, and he managed a small, nervous smile. “Hello…”

Moon gave him a soft smile in return and reached for him, and his hand twitched a little before taking hers. “Hey there, forest king.”

Cory blushed, letting his eyes drop to the porch once more. “I’m no king.”

The silence hung in the air for a moment, before Cory’s aunt clapped her hands together, causing both of them to jump. Moon could feel the shaking in Cory’s fingers as his aunt ushered them both inside with promises of iced tea and burgers on the grill. “This might be one of the last nice days we have before fall really hits with a vengeance, so we ought to enjoy it as well we can, don’t y’all think?”

She urged Cory to show Moon around and dragged Moon’s mother with her to the kitchen, talking a million miles a second about her family’s old recipe for potato salad that she just couldn’t wait to share with their new friends, and once the two of them were alone at the bottom of the stairs, Cory finally pulled his hand free. He also looked up.

“I’m sorry,” he said, and he left the apology there for Moon to do with as she pleased. All of a sudden, she understood why he seemed so unhappy to see her. He was afraid she might be angry with him. But for what…?

“You don’t have to apologize,” she protested, but he shook his head.

“No, no, I do. I lied to you; I almost made you run away with me. I should never have dragged you into that…”

Moon stepped closer, wrapping one arm around his and reaching with her other to grasp his hand. “Hey, no, it’s okay. You were afraid of getting caught. You had every right to be. I made my own choices.”

“Can you forgive me…?” He looked at her with uncertainty, but instead of an answer she leaned in to kiss his jaw. He blushed even harder this time, but seemed to understand her response.

“You can come with me. My room is up there.” He nodded to the stairs, and Moon followed him, watching his body language as they ascended to the second floor. There was none of the confidence he’d had in the forest, and there seemed to be a hesitation to his every movement. The dangers of the forest floor, with its gopher holes and fox holes and oddly placed roots, seemed nothing in comparison to the pitfalls of a home. Here, he seemed to lack the certainty in his own actions, and she wondered how long it would take before he grew accustomed to the safety a true home could offer.

He brought her to a small room just to the left of the stairs, and the first thing she noticed was the view he had of the forest. She stepped toward the open window, resting her palms on the sill, and looked out across the road to the trees that rustled in the faint breeze. It was a warm day, no doubt the last warm day of the season, as his aunt had said, and she could smell the conifers on the air.

“Do you ever go back there?” she asked, turning away from it. Cory had taken a seat on his bed, and he moved over and patted the space beside him, shaking his head.

“My aunt doesn’t like me to. I’ve gone in a couple of times, just to explore, but I was gone too long the last time and she was worried, so I haven’t in a few days.”

Moon sat where he’d motioned for her, and dropped her backpack to the ground. She rummaged around in it for a moment before pulling out a simple ham-and-cheese sandwich. Cory’s eyes widened a little, and he smiled, a true smile this time.

“You brought one.”

She laughed and handed him half. “Of course I did. There’s a soda in there, too. I thought we could use something a little familiar.”

For a long while, they sat in easy silence, eating their sandwich and simply enjoying the familiarity of each other’s company, but eventually Moon had to ask.

“Do you ever see her? Fox, I mean, when you’re in the forest?”

Cory shook his head. “No. I think she’s gone back to wherever she stays when nobody needs her. I know it sounds crazy, but she isn’t just a deer. She’s some sort of forest spirit, I think. When she’s not needed, she’s not there. When she is needed, she comes to the people who need her. She’s the real protector of the forest.”

Moon reached over to touch Cory’s wrist. “Will you tell me what happened? I mean, what really happened?”

For a long while, Cory stared down at his lap, saying nothing, but Moon urged him with a gentle nudge and he heaved a heavy sigh.

“How much do you want to know?” he asked, quietly.

“Everything,” she said. “Or as much as you’re willing to tell me.”

“Alright,” he said. “Everything, then.”

~*~

Cory Larson’s story began long before he ever met Fox. “I used to go into the woods a lot as a child. It was safe there. I could trust the trees and hide from my father if I had to. He didn’t like me to go there. He said it was unsafe, dangerous. I could get hurt. I always thought that didn’t make much sense, since he was already hurting me at home anyway. Why would he care if I got hurt in the woods?

“I was fourteen when I met her. Well, it was just after I turned fourteen. Things were getting worse with my dad for a long time, but I just couldn’t take it anymore and I had started spending more and more time in the woods. It was summer, and he would be gone for long hours at his job. I’d run off and get lost and pretend I didn’t have to return.

“Fox came out of nowhere, or she seemed to. There was a flurry of leaves, the wind spinning them into a magical spiral, and she stepped straight out of the center and walked right up to me. She sat before me, wrapped her tail around her, and put a paw up on my knee. I could almost hear her. She promised it would be alright, that she was going to keep me safe. I know how this makes me sound, but I believed her…”

Moon rested a hand on Cory’s arm. “I met her. I know how powerful she was. I know you’re not crazy.”

He smiled in relief, and continued his story.

“The fox was always there when I’d come to the forest. We’d play. If I was in a lot of pain, she’d curl up beside me, lick away my tears, sometimes put her paw against my skin and take some of the pain away. When I had to leave the forest, she always tried to stop me, darting in front of me to push me back. But I knew if I didn’t get back to my dad, he would come for me, and it would be so much worse, so I always went home again.

“But then, one day, it just got so bad…” Cory shook his head to fight off the memories, and Moon gave him the time to gather himself. “He came after me late one night, after I was supposed to have gone to sleep, and I just knew that if I didn’t get away he was going to kill me. I could see Fox in the distance, and I knew that if I just got to the trees, I’d be safe. So I ran. He came after me, but I managed to lose him in the darkness. The next day, he came back with his friends. They almost found my hiding place, but Fox ran out and attacked the leg of one of the men. They turned back, but not before…” His voice caught in his throat, and he took a deep, shaking breath. “Not before my dad shot her.”

Moon could see how visibly this part of the story was affecting Cory, and she gave him his space once more, leaving her hand where it was resting on his arm to keep that connection open between the two of them, but otherwise giving Cory however much time he needed.

“By the time they were gone, and I could leave my hiding spot, she was dead. I buried her beneath her favorite tree, and tried to stay safe the way she would have kept me safe, but without her around, it…it didn’t take long for him to find me. He came back out that night and caught me sleeping over her grave. He dragged me up by the hair and I fought him as hard as I could. I escaped for a moment, but I slipped in the dirt near the stream and hit my head on the boulder. Before I could get my wits together, he had me by the hair and the shirt again, and he shoved me face down in the water. I knew I was dying. It seemed fitting. My protector was gone. Without her, there was nothing to save me.”

“But you didn’t die,” Moon said, and he shook his head.

“I did, I think. I think I was dead for much longer than a person can be dead for and still come back alright. My dad was long gone when I was dragged from the stream, and the water was purged from my lungs, and the life was breathed back into me. I was saved, given a new life, by the strangest woman I’ve ever seen.”

With this, Cory pushed himself to his feet and began to pace in the small space, using his hands to help tell the rest of this story. “She was tall, taller than I am, and she had the tail of a fox, and the antlers of a deer. Her hair grew leaves from its strands, and her face had bark around her eyes. She had deep green, gauzy wings on her back that fluttered as she cocked her head from one side to another looking down at me, and she had a glow all around her—the same glow Fox had in the woods that last night when she said it was time for me to leave.”

“What was she…?” Moon asked, breathlessly.

“I don’t know. Some sort of wood nymph? Fairy? Maybe the spirit of the forest itself… ‘Child of the Storm,’ she called me. ‘King and protector of the forest. Live.’”

Moon swallowed hard, and Cory lowered himself to his knees in front of her, almost pleading with her to believe him. “After she brought me back from death, I fell asleep again, and when I woke, there was just the deer. Somehow, I knew that the woman, the deer, and the fox, they were all the same being. One of her forms had died, but she came back in another. She took me through the woods, deeper into the forest than I’d ever gone before, until we came to that clearing. She helped me make a shelter and showed me how to find the right berries and how to get water, and over time…Cory disappeared. He was someone who’d died in the forest, someone we hadn’t been able to protect or save. Murdered by the hunter.”

“And you became Storm, king of the forest.”

Cory nodded solemnly. “Until they took me out. For a little while, the forest listened to me. I could hear it speaking, could tell when there were people nearby and knew when something was in danger. We saved a rabbit one time, when it got caught at the edge of the tree line by someone’s forgotten trash. It’s foot got wrapped up in a plastic bag that was caught around the tree itself, and it had hurt itself struggling. I unwrapped it, and Fox touched its leg with her nose and healed it, and it hopped away. And then, Fox took all of my powers away from me…she decided it was time for me to go home, and the cops found us, and when they took me out of the forest, Storm the King disappeared and Cory came back.”

He looked up, pleading for her to believe him, but Moon had seen these things with her very eyes. She had seen the omnipresence of the deer itself, had felt the fear that saturated the part of the stream where Cory Larson had died, and neither of them could deny the bright glow that had surrounded their guardian in those final moments alone in the woods.

She slipped off the bed and knelt beside him, taking his hands in hers. “She knew you needed her help, so she came to help you. And when she was sure it was safe for you to return, she made sure you met the right people who would take care of you when you left the trees.”

“You mean you…?” he asked, his voice quiet, but Moon shook her head.

“Not just me. My sister, who knew what Fox wanted before I did. My mother, who saw who you were and called the cops. And that police officer who promised me he would keep you safe, even though I don’t think he knew if he could keep that promise.”

Cory squeezed her hands, and something tense in his shoulders loosened for the first time. “I’m glad you didn’t listen when I tried to run you off. And I’m glad you came, today.”

She leaned in, pressing her lips to his, and across the street, high in the trees, there sat a woman who watched from her distance with a soft smile on her lips. Her boy was safe, and the girl of the Moon would keep him that way. All was well in the forest once more.

The End

[pencil-or-ink-blog]

Moon and Storm - Part Two

Monday morning came far too soon, and for once, the deer was not waiting outside for her. Not that she expected it. The deer had gotten her attention, and had shown her what she was needed for. There was no reason to keep coming back, and she probably wanted to stay close to her boy anyway.

Stone and Echo seemed disappointed by its sudden disappearance from their lives, but Star remained pensive and quiet, watching her sister as she moved through the kitchen and got them all breakfast. “She told you something,” Star said when the boys were focused on greedily devouring their pancakes. “And you heard her.”

“Maybe I did,” Moon replied. “Eat.”

Moon’s mind wandered all throughout the school day, and she found it hard to focus on her work. When lunch period rolled around, she packed up all of her belongings and sneaked a sandwich into the computer lab with her. Between stolen bites, she looked up the news story her mother told her about the day before, hoping to find a picture of the boy who had disappeared into the woods, but there was no face to attach to the stories and all she got was a name: Cory Larson, 15, from Beaverton. He ran away from home one night after a disagreement with his father and was last seen disappearing into the forest. All local attempts to find him had turned up nothing. A related story spoke of a neighbor who was in stable condition after being attacked by a vicious fox during one of the attempted rescue missions.

“Cory probably got eaten by the wild animals. I mean, look what they did to my leg.”

Angrily, Moon shut down the computer.

“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” she muttered to it, though she wasn’t at all sure that the boy she met in the forest was Cory. He seemed about the right age – only a year younger than her – but there was no proof one way or another. The boy in the forest didn’t seem like a kid who’d run away only a month ago after a disagreement. There was something else there, something the deer wanted her to uncover, and she was determined to do just that.

She was not paying attention as she left the library, the bell that would toll the end of lunch still a good ten minutes away, and so she was not expecting it when someone brushed forcefully past her. The hard knock against her shoulder sent her tumbling into the lockers to her side and a group of snickering voices surrounded her.

“Oops,” one of the girls said. “Sorry, didn’t see you there Moony.”

Moon glared. For years, the girls had been making her school life a walking nightmare, and she was already in a foul enough mood from the articles she’d just read. “You did it on purpose.”

The girl gave an exaggerated intake of breath and placed her hand to her chest. “On purpose! Such accusations!”

Another girl laughed. “C’mon Moony, it’s all in good fun. Play along.”

Moon righted herself and tried to walk away from them, but they quickly followed, surrounding her again. The first girl wrapped an arm around Moon’s shoulders. “So what were you doing in the library, Moony? Studying?”

Moon didn’t grace her with an answer, but this didn’t deter the girl at all.

“I wouldn’t bother if I were you. You know what moons do, don’t you? They orbit bigger and better planets, that’s all, and they reflect the light from the sun. That’s all you are. Just a dense little rock, orbiting more important people, reflecting everyone else’s brightness but without any of your own. I don’t even know why you bother coming here everyday—”

Before she could finish her sentence, Moon did something she had never done before. She hauled back and punched the girl straight in the nose. The girl went over backwards, hands flying to her face, but Moon could see the blood and it made her sick. Before anyone could realize what had happened, Moon made a run for it. She pushed past the other girls, heading for the double doors at the end of the hallway, her breath catching and her heart pounding close to her ears. A teacher’s voice called out through the din, shouting her name in a very stern tone, but she ignored it and kept running.

Out the door, down the steps, and across the field. There, on the other side of the chain link fence, was the deer. She stood alert, waiting for Moon, her eyes darting over Moon’s shoulder at the teacher that was tearing after her, but Moon climbed the fence and hopped over to the other side and kept running, following the deer as she leapt across the highway and off in the direction of the forest.

They kept running until Moon was sure that nobody was following, and then she slowed her pace, her breath heavy from the exertion. She collapsed to her knees as a sharp wind blew, and a shiver went through her body. This was unlike the last two times she’d come into this forest, where curiosity had led her and it felt like a safe place. Now, she truly felt as though she was trespassing on another’s territory, led forth by nothing but fear, and she wondered briefly if she would become the next news story.

The soft crunch of leaves nearby drew her attention and she jerked her head up, looking at the intruder. Ten feet away, the boy paused mid-step, eyes a little wide at having been caught. Beside him stood the deer, and Moon brought herself to her feet and raised her chin defiantly, waiting for him to yell her away.

But he didn’t.

“Are you running from something?” he asked, and after a hesitation she nodded.

“I got into a fight at school. I’m probably going to get suspended.”

He frowned, looking at the ground for a moment before meeting her eyes again. “Was it worth it?”

“Yes.” The word came before her thoughts did, and she realized she didn’t at all feel guilty for hitting the other girl. In fact, she felt better than she’d felt in a long time, freer. There would be consequences later, but she’d deal with that then. For now…

“You aren’t chasing me away,” Moon pointed out, curiously.

The boy seemed to roll this over in his mind for a moment, before smiling a mischievous smile. “You’re not an invader this time,” he said. “Fox wouldn’t have brought you here if she didn’t have good reason. If she trusts you, I guess I can. Come on.” He held his hand out for her, a sign of truce between them, and Moon stepped forward and slipped her hand into his.

“Where are we going?”

“Home,” he said.

The boy led her through the forest, winding his way through the trees and telling her how to watch her feet for the more deceptive parts of their path. “You can lose your footing in a gopher hole or a fox hole easily here, or trip over a root. You have to be careful. Once you know what to look for, it becomes easier.”

Moon raised an eyebrow. “How long did it take you to figure it out?”

“Oh, I always knew what to look for. I’m king here. The forest doesn’t dare try to trip me.”

Finally, the surroundings began to look a little more familiar, and Moon’s nerves eased. The boy was leading her to the clearing, she could see that now, and she followed him with trust.

The boy took her to his rock covering. Up close, she could see that it was probably man-made, hand-crafted no doubt by the boy himself, but there was room enough for both of them and Moon pulled out her sandwich to finish. Instantly, the boy became alert, staring at the food with slightly widened eyes.

“Is…it alright?” she asked, holding her sandwich up.

The boy nodded. “Of course. It’s…it just smells very good.”

Without hesitation, Moon broke the sandwich in half and handed the uneaten half over to him, and he devoured it in a bare minute.

“Do…you have food out here?”

The boy shrugged. “The forest shows me where all the best berries are, but that’s about it. There’s water in the streams and fruit that lines the banks. Nothing like this.”

“How long have you been out here…?”

Again, the boy shrugged. “I don’t know. I don’t keep track of the time. There’s just the forest and Fox out here, nobody to keep time for.”

“But, where did you come from?”

He looked at her with a strange confusion in his eyes. “Come from? I didn’t come from anywhere. I’m the king of the forest. I rose fully formed from the streams themselves when the forest decided it needed me. No doubt I’ll disappear back into them when it decides it’s through with me.” He motioned to the deer, who had lain in a patch of grass beneath a beam of midafternoon sun, her eyes gazing at the line of trees around the basin as if keeping watch. “Fox knows more than I do, but she doesn’t tell me much.”

Moon leaned back against the shelter and ate the last of her sandwich, then folded her hands in her lap. For a long while, the two of them sat there in silence, watching the deer watch the forest. It was an easy silence, and Moon found herself more at peace with this strange boy than she was in the comfort of her own bed. From time to time, the boy would call to the deer, making a kissing sound with his lips and holding his hand out, but she would merely look over and blink, and return to watching the trees.

“How long will you stay?” the boy asked, finally. “I could prepare a bed for you. I know the best leaves.”

The offer was tempting, and Moon almost said yes, but she thought of her mother and her siblings, and the articles she’d read at the library, and shook her head. “I have to get home to my family. They’ll miss me.”

“But won’t you be in trouble? For fighting, I mean?”

Moon nodded solemnly, a pit forming in her stomach. “Likely. But I made a choice. I have to face the consequences.”

The boy eyed the ground beneath his feet unhappily for a long moment. “Will I see you again…? Will you come back?”

Moon smiled, and rested a hand on his shoulder. “I’ll come back tomorrow, if I can get away. And if I can’t, then I’ll try the next day, and the next day, and the next day. I won’t ever stop trying.”

The boy looked relieved, and he stood and wiped his hands on his pants before reaching down to help Moon to her feet. “I’ll take you home, then,” he said, and he clasped her hand and led her through the woods back to edge of the forest.

~*~

Moon’s mother was very cross, that evening. Moon stood in the kitchen, her head hung and her hands behind her back, as her mother paced across the linoleum and lectured her on everything from fighting in class, to running away, to returning again to that forest.

“Do you understand the danger, Moony?” she said, and Moon winced at the horrible nickname she’d tried for so long to shake. Her mother missed it, however, and kept going. “You could be dead! You have no idea what kind of wild animals there are in that forest! What if you stepped in a fox hole and broke your ankle, but we couldn’t find you?”

I would not. The King of the Forest was there to see I’d be safe. But these are not words she dared speak out loud, and her mother continued some more.

“You’ve been suspended. You’re lucky you weren’t expelled! That girl and her family could have pressed charges!”

“She was pushing me around, Mama! She shoved me and said awful things!”

“Then you must be the bigger person!”

Moon shook her head, stepping away. “You don’t care! You never take my side in these things! I don’t feel sorry for it, not for any of it! I’d do it all over again—and I will! If she ever touches me again I’ll do a lot worse!”

Before her mother could protest, she turned and ran up to her room, ignoring the shocked looks on her brothers’ faces as she passed them in the hallway and her sister’s prying eyes as the girl peeked out of her own bedroom. Moon slammed her door shut, collapsing on the bed. She was angry, her body shaking, and she knew the tears were not far away.

After a few minutes, there was a soft knock.

“Leave me alone!” Moon called, pushing herself up and grabbing a pillow to clutch tightly in her lap. The door opened a moment later, and her mother looked inside, her face covered in remorse.

“Moon, can I come in?”

“Not if you’re going to repeat everything you already said.” She glared hard, but her mother’s face softened and she stepped inside of the room, closing the door gently behind her.

“No, I won’t.” She sighed softly, and came to sit beside Moon on the bed. “I just want you know that I’m worried about you. I know it’s difficult on you—caring for your siblings as much as you do, and it’s hard to make friends and feel like you can fit in. You have your father’s spirit—you long to be out there, exploring the world. There’s a touch of the wild in you. I just want to help you achieve all of your dreams. Fighting, running away from school, wandering off into the forest, they scare me.”

Moon sighed, her anger dissipating. She nodded. “I know, Mama…I promise I’ll be safe.”

“That’s not what I want to hear, Moon. Promise you won’t do those things again.”

Moon’s shoulders slumped, but she nodded again, and her mother looked relieved. “Good girl.” She leaned in to kiss Moon’s forehead. “You can’t go back to school this week, but I got all your schoolwork collected for you. After the kids get off to school in the morning, the day is yours, just get your work done before Monday.”

“Yes, Mama.”

“I love you, Moon. You’re a good kid.”

But Moon was already planning her next trip into the forest, and as soon as her mother was gone she reached for her schoolwork so there wouldn’t be anything to interfere with her trip the next morning.

~*~

Moon was excited as she helped her brothers and her sister prepare for school the next day. While Stone and Echo were decidedly grumpy that their newfound deer friend no longer waited for them in their backyard, Moon found herself brimming with strange morning energy. Once the kids were out of the house, she would be free for hours to explore the forest with her new friend. She poured the cereal and even gave Stone the extra big glass of orange juice, like he liked, just to keep everyone happy, and in no time at all she had all three of them on the bus and was running inside to get dressed for the day.

A hearty rain had come the night before and covered the grass in a blanket of water droplets, so she put on her rain boots and packed a double lunch, before running off to the woods. The boy and the deer were standing at the forest’s edge, waiting for her, and the boy grinned widely when she came up to them.

“I was worried you wouldn’t come!” he exclaimed, looking her over. “You were alright? You weren’t in much trouble?”

Moon smirked. “I’m in a lot of trouble, but my mother’s at work and the kids are at school, so there’s nobody to stop me right now. What are we going to do today?”

He grabbed her hand and took off, careful not to drag her along too hard. “I have something to show you!”

Fox leapt through the trees and the two of them followed in her tracks, laughing as they hopped over logs in a perfect mimicry of her long strides, and it wasn’t long before Moon could hear the trickle of water up ahead. With her stomach aflutter, she let the boy bring her straight to the water’s edge, where he urged her to kneel down and stay quiet. The stream stretched about two feet wide, and Moon’s jeans soaked up the water as the boy looked in both directions for what he was hoping to find. Fox, for her part, simply dipped her neck low to lap up the cool, clear waters.

“There,” the boy said, pointing at something in the distance. Moon looked past him, narrowing her eyes, and caught sight of something dark green jump from the muddy embankment to a pile of slick rocks in the center of the stream.

“It’s a frog!” she cried, stifling her voice but not her excitement.

“There’s a whole family of them! Look!”

Moon started to notice more frogs hopping about, and she took the boy’s arm in both of her hands and held on as they watched the family of frogs play in the rushing water.

~*~

As they sat back in the boy’s alcove for lunch, Moon decided to ask a few questions that had been burning on her mind. She watched him devour his sandwich for a moment first, but when he looked up at her, something on her face must have given her away. He swallowed hard.

“You have things to say.”

Moon nodded. “Just a few questions.”

“I can answer a few questions, I suppose.”

Moon smiled and reached for a soda she’d grabbed before heading out the door. When she’d washed the last of the food from her mouth and offered the drink to him, she settled in to talk. “I was wondering if you had a name,” she said. “I can’t just call you ‘King’. I mean, I suppose I could, but isn’t there something else I could call you?”

The boy smiled a little in relief that this is all she wanted to know, and looked off to where Fox had once more settled herself in a sunbeam at the edge of the clearing. “My name is Storm,” he replied. “I came into the forest during a storm, and I know I will leave during one, too. Until then, I am the storm.”

“And the king?” she asked.

“Well, yeah. That too.” He blushed a little, and ducked his head into his sandwich again.

“What can you tell me about Fox?” Moon asked next. “It’s a strange name for a deer, isn’t it?”

But the boy just laughed softly and swallowed down his food. “Not so strange. She used to be a fox, long ago, when I first met her. It was in a different life, long before this one. But, there was a hunter—a horrible man. He killed her, and she had to come back as a deer. It’s alright, though, because even though deer are easier to hunt, I’m here to keep her safe. She’s protected as long as I’m king in this forest.”

Moon looked from the boy to the deer, thinking deeply. “What do you remember about that previous life…?” she asked. She almost didn’t expect an answer, and she almost didn’t receive one. She didn’t press the boy, didn’t push about her question, and finally he sighed heavily and put the food down.

“I don’t remember much,” he admitted. “I remember it was a very bad place.”

“Where you were…?”

He nodded. “I think I was held captive by the hunter, and I think she saved me. There was darkness, and cold…and pain. Fox rescued me, and lost her life because of it. When she came back in this life, I came with her. I have to protect her for protecting me before.”

“Is that why you didn’t want me coming into the forest?” Moon twisted to face the boy, and he looked up to meet her eyes.

“Humans are dangerous. I have to protect the forest.”

“You look like a human.”

“I had to take this form,” the boy said, urging Moon to understand. “Your kind only fears itself, and I needed something that could frighten other humans away. There aren’t many of you who dare to come into the forest, but I can’t let anyone hurt Fox. Not again.”

Moon nodded. “I get it,” she said, and the boy sighed in relief. Moon had one more question, however. “Do you know of every human that comes into the forest…?”

“Yes,” the boy said firmly. “If Fox doesn’t tell me, then the trees themselves do. They’re very talkative, if you know how to listen.”

“Was there…” she paused for a moment, and took a deep breath. “Was there a boy who came into the woods, maybe a month ago? He would have looked about our age, and he would have been followed by a lot of other people who were searching for him.”

The boy’s face paled a little. “A…boy?”

“His name was Cory Larson. He was fifteen. He went missing from a town over there.” She pointed in the direction opposite from her house, to where Beaverton sat on the other side of the forest.

“Was he a friend of yours?” Storm asked, cautiously.

Moon shook her head, her shoulders slumping a little. “No. I never met him. He’s…I suppose you could say he’s a warning. My mother told me about him getting lost in the forest in hopes of scaring me away. I was just wondering if you’d heard anything about it. Or if you know something.”

The boy met Moon’s eyes once more, and there was a depth of sadness there that made Moon’s heart twist. “Cory Larson is dead,” he said. “He died when he came here. It was too dark, he couldn’t see where he was going. Fox found him, but…by the time I got there, it was too late. He was already dead.”

Moon’s breath caught in her throat. “What did you do with the body…?”

“We gave it back to the earth. The forest took what belonged to it, as it always does. And we all belong to it, in the end.”

With these sobering words, Storm pushed himself to his feet and moved to the center of the clearing. “It will rain soon. I’ll help you get home. I don’t want you to get into more trouble.”

~*~

That night, throughout dinner, Moon thought hard about everything she’d learned. The forest seemed almost magical in some way, and though Storm’s stories seemed too fantastical to believe, she found herself unwilling to think of him as a liar. She wished she could speak to Fox the way he always seemed to. She felt that if anyone could clear up the truth for her, it would be the deer.

Moon often watched a movie with her mother on Tuesdays after the kids had gone to bed, but as she settled herself on the couch with a bowl of popcorn, she found herself unable to let go of her concerned thoughts. Her mother scrolled through the offerings, but the wiser woman, who usually asked Moon all sorts of questions about her day, seemed to notice Moon’s thoughts at work. She kept quiet, eyeing Moon out of the corner of her eye from time to time, a gentle smirk on her face as she waited for her daughter to find the words to speak.

“Mama?” Moon asked, finally. “What do you know about Cory Larson’s disappearance?”

Her mother absently cocked her head to the side as she continued to read the titles of the available movies on the screen. “Who?”

“Cory Larson. The boy who disappeared from Beaverton, who got lost in the forest.”

Moon’s mother looked back at her with some confusion, and then shrugged. “Not much. I just know he went into the woods late at night and was never found. I think his father’s a police officer. There were search parties, but I don’t think they’ve found him yet. Why do you ask?”

“I guess there’s no reason…” Moon let herself trail off, but her mother put down the remote and twisted to face her daughter.

“Moon, I’m going to ask you again, did you see something in the forest? The Larson boy, maybe?”

Moon shook her head quickly. “No, Mama, nothing like that. It’s just…”

Her mother smiled. “It’s just your empathy working on overdrive, isn’t it? I told you the story and now you’re worried about this boy you’ve never met.”

Moon nodded. “Yes. He must be frightened out there. I just wish I could help him in some way.”

Moon’s mother leaned in to kiss her daughter’s forehead. “I wouldn’t put too much worry into it. The universe always has a plan for these sorts of things. If he can be found, he will be. Hopefully, sooner rather than later.”

Moon smiled faintly, and let her mother finish picking out their movie, but the talk did little to help calm her mind. That night, she dreamed of a horrible storm, a sensation of drowning, and a deep fear that cut through her very core. She woke drenched in sweat, unable to return to sleep, and listened in growing panic as the thunder crashed around her house and the lightning lit up the sky overhead. The boy’s words echoed through her head as she lay there, I came into the forest during a storm, and I will leave during one, too…, and she couldn’t help but wonder if he would still be there the next morning.

She prayed to the gods of the forest that he would.

~*~

But of course, the next morning Moon found both Fox and Storm well and happy in the basin in the forest, and both looked up expectantly as she approached.

“You made it again!” the boy called. “I don’t know why I keep worrying you won’t come. You’re always here.”

Moon laughed. “Well, I won’t always be here. When I go back to school on Monday, I won’t be able to come visit as often. But maybe you’ll be able to visit me some.”

The boy thought about this for a moment. “Maybe…it would be interesting to visit you, but I don’t think I can leave the forest. Can the forest’s king and protector ever really leave it? I think not.”

While this saddened Moon some, it didn’t surprise her. “We’ll figure something out,” she promised him. “But for now, we’ve got three whole days. What shall we do today?”

The boy’s smile spread across his whole face, and his eyes lit up. “I have just the thing to show you! Come on, it’s a bit of a hike, but you’ll love it even more than you loved the frogs! It’s this way!”

~*~

And so it went, for the rest of the week. Moon and Storm spent every morning together, from the moment the kids were off on the school bus to just before Moon’s mother was set to return. They explored the forest with the abandon of children, and found new areas that even the king of the forest himself hadn’t known were there. Whenever they felt they were getting lost, Fox was always there to lead them back to a more familiar space, and when Friday afternoon came and it was time to go home Moon found herself in deep sorrow, knowing that her mother would be home all weekend, and there would be no chance for her to sneak off to the forest without getting caught.

“But I don’t see why you can’t come,” Storm pressed. “You don’t have school, and you’re not in trouble anymore.”

“I’m not allowed to go into the forest,” Moon tried to explain. “It’s dangerous here.”

But Storm scoffed. “Not hardly. The forest protects its creatures, even your kind, and besides, I’m here to protect you. Nobody would dare cross the king of the forest! And there’s Fox. You’re perfectly safe.”

“I know that,” Moon said. “But my mother doesn’t. And besides, the forest doesn’t protect everyone. What about Cory Larson?”

It was the first time she’d brought him up since Tuesday morning, and the boy stiffened slightly and looked away, his face unhappy. “Who?”

“The boy who got lost in the forest, the one who died. Or, you said he died, anyway.”

“You can’t hold the forest responsible for that. It didn’t do anything wrong.”

Moon rolled her eyes. “He died because he got lost in a dangerous place he didn’t know. Maybe if he had you and Fox for guides he wouldn’t have, but my mother’s at least right about this much. If you don’t know what you’re doing or where you’re going, the forest isn’t a safe place.”

But the boy threw his hands up to his ears to block out her words. “That’s not how he died! None of that is right! You don’t know what you’re talking about!”

It was the most agitated she’d seen him since the very first day, and she took a step back in shock. Fox stepped up between them and rested her head against his, and Storm buried his hands in her fur, clinging tightly. After a long moment, he finally took a few deep breaths and let himself calm down.

“You didn’t know Cory Larson, and you don’t know this forest, so I wouldn’t expect you to understand, but he didn’t get lost and the forest didn’t kill him. The forest tried to protect him. But the forest is just trees and dirt, a stream, and some animals. It can’t stand up to a force as powerful as mankind. That’s why I was called into existence. The hunter killed Cory. He killed Fox before she took this form. I’m here to make sure he never gets into the forest to kill another innocent creature again. The forest isn’t dangerous; your people are.”

Moon sucked in her breath, reeling. “The hunter killed him?”

“He was face down in the water. The hunter pushed him down until he drowned, and left him there for dead. I didn’t get there in time, Moon…I could have saved him, but I didn’t get there in time…”

The boy took a seat on the ground, folding his legs beneath him, and he looked so small and desolate for a moment that Moon found herself kneeling beside him and wrapping him gently in her arms. He held tight to her the way he always held tight to Fox, and let her rock him for a moment.

“I tried to get there in time,” he said, his voice trailing off. “I tried to save him.”

“I believe you,” Moon replied. She kissed his forehead the way her mother always kissed hers, and he seemed confused for a moment, as though he didn’t understand it at all.

“That’s what humans do when we want to show someone we love them, and that we’re there for them if they need it.”

“Like a mark of protection?” he asked, and Moon nodded. He looked at her for a moment, and then pushed himself to his knees and leaned over to kiss her forehead in return. “Now we both have it.” He helped her to her feet and took her hand firmly in his. “I’ll take you home now, so you won’t get in trouble again. I hope you can make it out tomorrow, but if not…I suppose I understand.”

With that, Moon knew she would do everything in her power to meet up with the boy again tomorrow, even if it just got her further into trouble. She would try to avoid getting caught, but if she did, the consequences were worth it. Storm needed her as much as he needed Fox, and she wasn’t going to let him down.

[pencil-or-ink-blog]

Moon and Storm - Part One

Deep in the heart of the land, many hundreds of miles from the sea, there stands an old and venerable forest. It has stood for hundreds of years, the branches of its trees stretching out to shelter the wildlife that thrives within its bosom. Not far from this forest, there stands a small town. Those who live there dare not venture too deep into the forest, for fear of getting lost or swallowed whole by the old growth itself, but their fear is unfounded, for the forest is harmless to those who do not mean harm. As far as the forest is concerned, even humans belong under its protection.

It was early October when Moon first learned of the forest’s true priorities. She could not have expected life to change so drastically for her when she awoke that Monday—did not, in fact, expect anything but the drab and dreadful week that lay ahead of her. And yet, that is the wonderfully surprising thing about forests: they always choose the most innocent of times to strike, for better or worse…

~*~

The morning had always been Moon’s least favorite time of day. The alarm would go off, ripping her from her wild dreams, a shrill and cantankerous call forcing her back to the mundanity of the week. Some days it would take two snoozes and a full orchestral band blaring from her phone just to wake her up, but others were like today: her eyes jolted open the instant the alarm went off, and immediately she set about fighting with it, smashing at all the buttons with her flailing hand. Her victory complete, she collapsed against her mountain of pillows and stared at the ceiling, her heart pounding within her chest as she tried in vain to remember the dream she’d awoken from. A voice had been calling her name, the sound of drums were thumping in the distance, and the hearty scent of an autumn rain had filled the air, but she could recall no details other than these.

Sighing heavily, she stood, as her three siblings ran past her bedroom door. As the eldest, Moon often helped her mother with the younger children. Her mother worked early hours, leaving the house well before five in the morning, and it was Moon’s duty to wrangle her siblings into their day clothes and herd them out the door for school. She preferred the calm of the weekend, when everyone could sleep in and there were no alarms, but the weekend always came to an end and Monday morning always returned. It was time to get to business.

The boys zipped through the hallway again, Stone calling to Echo, and Echo calling for their sister Star. Moon shook her head and grumbled to herself about their overabundance of energy as she dressed for school, but there was something different in their voices as they whispered in the hallways. When the soft knock came on Moon’s door, a wave of anticipation rolled through her whole body, as if she’d been waiting for this knock since waking.

Standing on the other side of the door was Moon’s nine-year-old sister, Star. The girl had her long hair pulled into two braids on either side of her face, tied off with bright yellow bows, and like Moon, she still had a touch of sleep in her eyes, but there’s was something deeper there as well, a peacefulness that Moon found intriguing.

“What is it?” Moon asked, and Star broke into a wide grin.

“There’s a deer in our backyard!”

With that, she turned on her heel and went skipping after the twins.

This was, of course, completely unheard of. Deer never wandered this far from the woods. Occasionally Moon would spot a rabbit on the road to the bus stop, or spy a hawk high in the sky, but they never saw any deer. Curiously, Moon descended the stairs, following the excited sounds of her siblings as they crowded around the sliding glass door in the kitchen, ignoring the stacks of maple syrup corn cakes on the table behind them as they waved at the unusual sight before them.

Moon stepped closer, her long body towering over the two eleven-year-olds and the nine-year-old, and sure enough, there was a deer in yard. A doe, to be exact, lying in the grass and watching the house with mild interest.

“Look!” shouted Echo, tapping on the glass. “It moved! Its ears are twitching!”

The movement was faint, but Moon caught it, too. As soon as she met eyes with the deer, its ears twitched. “It’s too many people,” Moon said, dragging the boys and Star back from the glass and shooing them off to the table. “Leave her be or you’ll scare her off.”

“We won’t scare her,” Stone piped up. “We just want to look at her a little more.”

But Moon shook her head. “Eat your breakfast.”

~*~

The deer stayed through breakfast, and still had not moved when they left for school, but Moon knew it would be gone by the time they returned. She was a little saddened by this, and on the way back from the bus stop that afternoon, her eyes searched the far off woods for any hint or sight of the deer. As always, there was nothing.

Her mother was already home by the time Moon walked in through the door, and the scent of hibiscus and lavender being hung to dry throughout the kitchen rushed over her as her mother’s voice hummed a lilting, remorseful tune. All at once, the humming stopped, and her mother poked her head into the living room. “Moon?”

“Yes, Mama. It’s me.”

“Come look, quickly, before she spooks. There’s a doe outside.”

Moon perked up, and dropped her backpack beside the couch, slowly following her mother into the kitchen where she could see the deer from the morning in the same place it had been before. Her mother’s hand rested on her shoulder, and the woman leaned in to whisper close to Moon’s ear. “She has been there for the past two hours. She was lying right there when I got home today. She’s a curious one; she’s been watching me work. You can see the intelligence in her eyes.”

Moon cocked her head to the side, nodding thoughtfully. “She was there this morning for breakfast. The kids saw her first. She hasn’t moved at all.”

“How odd,” her mother said, thoughtfully. “Well, whatever she’s come for, she seems quite determined. Have a seat; I’ll make you some tea and you can tell me how your day went before we’re bombarded by your siblings.”

~*~

That night, the house was abuzz with talk. The deer had not moved from its spot, and she kept her eyes trained on the glass door, moving only to perk her ears whenever Moon came into sight. It did not go unnoticed by Star, but the young girl had the forethought to speak her observation only to Moon, out of earshot of the twins.

“I think the deer is here for you,” Star said, braiding her dark hair. “I just don’t know why.”

“The deer is probably just here because our grass is comfortable, or because there are no wolves in our yard,” Moon said, softly.

“No, she’s here for you. And she knows it, too.” She held the end of her braid out and Moon tied it off, as they did every night. “You should see what she wants.”

Moon smiled and tucked Star into bed. “She wants you to go to sleep, and dream good dreams tonight.”

“No, that’s not what she wants. But I’ll do it anyway.” Star yawned then, and rolled over, dropping quickly off to sleep. Moon leaned over to kiss her sister’s tender forehead before leaving the room. Half an hour later, their mother had wrangled both boys to bed as well, and in the excitement of the day it did not take long for them to slip into dreamland. Moon, however, was up for several more hours. She sat on her bed, finishing her homework, distracted by the thoughts of the deer outside. Was Star right? Was the deer aware of her presence? Was she looking for Moon?

She was restless that night, tossing and turning, unable to capture the fickle mistress of sleep. Star’s words kept replaying in her head. “You should see what she wants.” Finally, when she was sure that her mother had gone to bed and she would not be interrupted, she slipped quietly out of her bed and tiptoed down the stairs to the kitchen. The deer had not moved in all that time, but lifted her head as Moon reached for the lock on the door. She clicked it up, and slowly slid the door open.

“Is it me you want?” she asked, taking a step outside, but the moment her foot made contact with the patio the deer leapt to its feet, spooked, and took off into the night. “Come back!” Moon tried to call after her, but the deer was gone. Their yard was once again empty. Completely normal. Moon sighed and shook her head, turning back to the house. She locked the door, shut off all the lights, and made her way once more to her room. This time, with everything returning to a state of normalcy, Moon was able to sleep, her dreams full of the majestic deer and a strange boy that had never visited Moon’s dreams before. The boy felt like cool rain against her face, sounded like the crash of thunder, and the deer herself seemed to alternate between her natural form, and that of a fox.

It was a curious dream, and the morning alarm was an unwelcome interference, but before she could slide back into sleep, a shriek tore through the house, and Echo and Stone both ran down the hallway outside of her bedroom door. “She’s still here! She’s still here! THE DEER IS STILL HERE!”

~*~

Every morning for the rest of the week, the deer would appear on their lawn, sometimes standing and facing the house, sometimes lying down for a long rest. And every afternoon, Moon would gather the courage to open that door and attempt to approach. Each time, the doe would stand and wander off, sometimes running, but other time sauntering away slowly. She would be back again in the morning, and Moon began to wonder if there wasn’t something to her sister’s predictions. The deer seemed to want something from them, from her, and she felt that if she could only figure it out, then perhaps that would be the key to unlocking her repetitious dream.

Who was the wild boy in her sleep? What did it mean? And why did she smell a rainstorm when none was around?

Friday night, the dreams were so erratic, so realistic, that she could not stay asleep for long. As the house slept around her and the sun rose outside on Saturday morning, she could think of nothing but the long day ahead of her staring endlessly at her strange new companion. Giving up on the broken promise of further rest, Moon slipped out of her bed and dressed for the day, choosing lighter clothing despite the voice in her head that warned her toward more substantial outerwear. Quietly, so as not to disturb her siblings or her mother, she tiptoed down the stairs and headed for the kitchen. Lying once more in the center of the lawn, was the mystifying doe.

“I wonder if you’re hungry,” Moon said. “But then, you never seem to nibble on my mother’s garden, and I know that’s something deer often do. Perhaps you’re just a very polite deer.” She poured herself a bowl of cereal and sat at the kitchen table to watch her guest through the glass of the sliding door. The deer seemed to be waiting for something, the patience of a saint guiding her stillness and an eerie sense of foreknowledge about her. There was neither concern nor curiosity in the deer’s serene face, and it reminded Moon in many ways of her mother. And perhaps a little of her sister as well.

Finally, Moon stood, taking her dish to the sink to wash it and return it to the cupboard. She would try one more time to approach, just once. Something in her felt that this time, it would be different.

Slowly, Moon inched the door open, sliding easily through the crack she’d made before shutting it again behind her. The deer stood, resolutely, and began to walk away from the house as she had each time before. Moon’s heart sunk, and she quickly called out to it.

“Wait, please, I’ll go back inside.” She pulled the door open behind her. “I won’t come near.”

The deer paused and looked back as Moon stepped into the house, and then both of her ears twitched. She turned again toward Moon and pawed at the ground, insistently. Confused, Moon stepped forward again.

Once more, the deer turned away, her walk steady and slow, and Moon began to feel as though she was supposed to follow it. Intrigued, she shut the door all the way and began the long trek after her mysterious guide.

They walked for nearly an hour, across the fields behind Moon’s home and past the line of the forest. The cool morning grew chillier the deeper they went, but Moon followed obediently. From time to time the deer would pause and check to ensure her charge was still behind her, but once satisfied, she would continue at her steady pace with even determination. She seemed to have a destination in mind, and Moon would not question it.

From early childhood, Moon had been told to avoid the forest, to never approach it, and the tall, ancient trees always seemed foreboding and dangerous, and yet, she found herself trusting in the deer in a way she might not have trusted anyone else. As the branches stretched over her head, Moon began to feel as though she was no longer a stranger in a foreign land, but rather, that she’d been accepted by forest itself. It welcomed her. Come, it said. Here, all are safe.

When the midday sun was just overhead, and they had reached the top of a steep hill, the deer stopped and surveyed the land before her, allowing Moon to approach. Beneath them was an open basin, and the light streamed down through the canopy of trees above to spread its golden rays across the crisp fall leaves. The scent of the earth was raw and fresh around her, and though the sky was clear she could smell the rain approaching. She could almost hear its pitter patter through the branches.

A rustling of leaves behind her drew Moon’s attention, and she turned quickly, coming face-to-face with the strange boy of her dreams.

He stood at her height, his pale skin painted with mud, his tousled dark hair ringed with a crown of twigs. In his hands he held a poorly crafted facsimile of a slingshot, but Moon had no fear. She somehow knew he would not use it.

“Get away from her!” the boy shouted at Moon. “Leave us alone!”

Moon looked back at the deer, whose whole attention had turned to the boy. There was a fierce love in that look, an expression of pride, and the deer crossed over to him and stopped just in his path. Instantly, he dropped the slingshot, his hand resting on the back of her neck, but he continued to glare at Moon.

“Leave this place. It’s not for you.”

Moon cocked her head to the side. “Who are you?”

“I am the King! I rule this land, and all you see are my subjects, and you are forbidden from this place!”

“I was invited by our mutual friend here.” Moon pointed to the deer, but this did nothing but infuriate the boy.

“She would never betray me in such manner! Begone, foul human! Begone!”

“Well I don’t know how to get back on my own. I don’t remember which way we came from.” As she spoke the words, she realized how true it was, and she began to feel uneasy for the first time. But the boy merely sneered at her.

“The forest will show you the way. It will not let you get lost.” He looked to the trees above his head and called out fiercely, “Take the human thing home!”

The wind began to pick up, blowing hard against her and rustling the branches. She could see the path open as the leaves tumbled along the ground, blowing away from the clearing. With a hefty sigh, Moon nodded. “Alright. If you want me gone so bad, I’ll leave. But she invited me. You’ll just have to discuss that with her later!”

Moon stomped off through the woods until she was sure to be out of sight of the boy, and then she slowed her pace and looked back. She hoped to see the deer in the distance, perhaps following her to see her safely home, but Moon was alone.

It might have been an awful idea, but she decided to trust the wind, and she let it lead her onward, that soothing voice calling to her. You are safe within our branches. You will never be lost so long as you trust in us. Finally, she came to the edge of the line of trees, and looked out across the field. Moon could see the fences that surrounded the houses of her cul-de-sac, and in the middle, painted a pale blue, was Moon’s home. The wind and the forest had not led her astray. She looked back at it once more, before finally stepping away from the woods and making that final trek back to her house.

When she entered through the back door her mother was in the kitchen, taking down the dried herbs and replacing them with more. “You left early this morning,” the woman said, a smile playing on her lips. “And there was no deer.”

“She came. We went for a walk, but I’m back now.”

Her mother nodded. “Have some lunch. There’s a sandwich in the fridge for you.”

While Moon ate, she thought very hard about what to do next. Somewhere in the woods was a boy who smelled of the storm, who called to the winds and proclaimed himself king of the land. And at his side, was a deer who had decided for whatever reason to bring Moon to him. That afternoon, as Moon finished the last of her homework, she made her decision. She set her alarm to wake her before anyone else would wake and she packed herself a simple lunch, storing it in the very front of the fridge for easy access. She put aside warm clothes and pulled her hiking boots from deep within the closet. If the deer returned in the morning, Moon would be prepared. And this time, the boy would not chase her off.

~*~

The next morning, Moon woke before her alarm. For a long moment, she listened to the near silence of the dawn hours. Her window was ajar, and the scent of fresh rain came through to her bedroom, filling the room with a deep October aroma. She could taste the fall leaves with every inhale, and every exhale was a small sigh of peace. By the time the alarm went off, the rain had picked up again, and the deep pitter-patter on the rooftop felt comforting.

She eased herself from her bed and dressed for the day, tucking her feet into her hiking boots and settling her warm sweater around her, before slowly making her way downstairs. As expected, the deer was outside.

Even in the rain she seemed unperturbed, standing regally as she waited for her newest charge. Moon left a note this time, and grabbed her lunch from the fridge, before following it out. “I’m ready,” she said. “Take me to him.”

The deer bobbed her head once in assent, and turned to the forest. She trotted rather quickly through the tall grasses of the field, pausing only to make sure Moon was keeping up, and didn’t quite settle until they were once more within the protective branches of the forest. There, she stopped, shaking her whole body to shake off the rain, before she continued the lengthy walk into the heart of the forest.

Time seemed to move quicker this journey, and in little time at all Moon found herself staring up at the slowly rising hill. Beyond that would be the basin, and somewhere nearby would be the boy. Moon looked around carefully, keeping watch for the shock of pale skin, but she didn’t see him anywhere near. Finally, they reached the top of the hill. Down below, hiding beneath an outcropping of rocks that formed a cave-like covering big enough for only two people, was the boy. He sat under the covering, holding his knees close, and seemed to watch the sky through the trees as it poured down on top of them. Moon ducked behind a tree to hide herself as the deer made her way to the clearing.

The boy looked up when he heard her approach, and a small smile spread over his face. “Fox! Where do you keep running off to?” He pulled away from his covering, stretching his legs and holding his arms out for the deer, who greeted him warmly. She let him hug her neck and bury his hands in her wet fur, before urging him back to the covering. There, the boy and the deer settled down to wait out the rain, the boy sitting with crossed legs and the deer laying with her head in his lap, utterly content as he stroked her face, his lips moving as he spoke words Moon could not hear from her distance.

This is how Moon spent her Sunday. As the rain finally let up, she kept to her hiding place and watched as the boy and the deer ventured out from their covering and frolicked through the clearing, chasing each other for a while, exploring places they must have explored a hundred times, and finally settling down for a midafternoon nap. She stayed long past when she intended to stay, and when she finally decided it was time to turn back, the forest graciously led the way. We’ll see you tomorrow, it seemed to say as it released her back to the field, and she waved once at the trees before jogging home.

~*~

Moon’s mother looked at her with concern as she slipped back into the house.

“Were you in the forest?” she asked, quickly fetching a towel from the downstairs bathroom.

“Only a little. I could see the house.” It was a lie, but she didn’t feel that her mother would understand the truth, so it was a necessary lie. “I was following the deer.”

“Moon…I think it’s best that you leave that deer alone. I know it’s been gracing us with its presence lately, but it’s a wild animal. It doesn’t want you around, and it’s going to go places you can’t go. The forest is dangerous. People disappear into it and never return. Just last month a boy from Beaverton disappeared in the forest, and nobody has found him yet. They may never find him. It’s best you stay away from there. Promise me.”

Moon cocked her head to the side. “What did the boy look like?”

Moon’s mother shrugged. “I don’t know. Does it matter? Did you see something?”

Moon thought for a moment about whether or not to tell her mother of the strange boy, the self-proclaimed king of the forest, but decided against it. It didn’t feel like the kind of information she should be sharing. Not yet, anyway. Not until she knew more. She shook her head.

“No. I was just curious. In case I do see something.”

Moon’s mother gave her a stern look. “Moon, you won’t see anything, because you’re going to stay out of that forest. Promise me.”

Although Moon didn’t like lying, especially to her mother, she knew there was no way out of this. Hesitantly, she nodded. “I promise, Mama…” she said.

“And you’ll leave that deer alone?”

Again, Moon nodded. “Yes, Mama. I will.”

Her mother’s expression softened into a smile, and she pulled Moon close with one arm and kissed her forehead. “Good girl. Now go upstairs and change out of these wet clothes. Dinner is in twenty minutes and then it will be night time. You have school in the morning.”

~*~

That night, as Moon prepared for bed, she had one thought on her mind. Somehow, she would return to the forest, and she would meet the boy, and she would not let him turn her away again. “You’ll let me in,” she whispered to her empty bedroom. “You’ll let me in, and I’ll help you, because that’s what your deer friend wants.”

[pencil-or-ink-blog]

The Nereid and the Seachild

Many Days Later

The boy immersed himself in his studies, learning the basics as his new school insisted, learning how to maneuver his freedom and survive his life, but his spare time – when he wasn’t swimming or collecting driftwood, sea glass, and polished stones – was spent with his nose in a book.

Finally, after weeks of study, he emerged with a name for himself. Eager to test it out in introduction, he found himself wandering the beach, headed for a little park he passed daily on his way to school.

The park was frequented by mothers, fathers, children, other students, workers with a day off eager for a swim, and the boy sat down on a bench and looked around him, debating who to introduce himself to for the first time. But fate made that decision for him when a familiar face appeared in his line of sight, a bright smile hidden behind a shock of bright red hair.

The boy lit up, excited to see his old friend the bartender.

“Hello there,” the bartender said. “Do you mind if I join you?”

The boy shook his head and patted the seat beside him. Though he had more practice now with speaking, he still preferred to use his language minimally. It was best to let his soul speak for him, and trust that there would always be those out there who could hear its voice, since his own was so quiet.

The bartender collapsed with a great sigh onto the bench. “I almost didn’t recognize you without your big old coat,” he teased. “And your skin – it’s starting to fill out. You’ve been eating more. Did you finally leave the bar?”

The boy nodded, waiting for an opening to say what he wanted to say, but suddenly not so sure he could say it.

The bartender nodded softly. “Good,” he responded. “I’m glad to hear that. It was no place for a kid. I’m sorry I so frightened you that last day. I shouldn’t have cornered you like that.”

Emphatically, the boy shook his head, moving his lips and forming the words carefully. “You didn’t frighten me so much,” the boy said. “It was the vending machine. It wasn’t…logical.” He laughed lightly. “I wasn’t…in a good place back then.”

The bartender’s eyes grew wide at the boy’s halting speech. “You speak,” he said.

The boy dropped his eyes, smiling and blushing. He nodded. “I always spoke. Just…was rusty.”

The bartender’s hand rested on the boy’s back, gently rubbing his thumb in circles between the boy’s shoulder blades. “I’m glad to see you doing so well,” he said.

The boy took a deep breath, and looked up, meeting the bartender’s eyes. “My name is Palaimon,” he said. “He was a god who rode dolphins and swam with the Nereids and saved sailors in trouble.”

The boy saw the confusion flicker over the bartender’s face, but the man was too polite to say anything. He smiled softly, and nodded. “Well, Palaimon, it’s a pleasure to meet you. I’m sure you know this already, but my name is Hans.” He held out his hand, and the book took it and shook it, before turning back to watch the water.

“Do you remember the lost mermaid that haunted the bar?” the boy asked.

Hans laughed. “Everyplace has its own myth about that, but yeah, I remember it. Pretty little thing can’t find her way home?”

The boy shook his head. “She never lost her way home. She was just helping people. Do you want to hear the real story? It’s the story of a Nereid, and the seachild whose life she saved.”

[pencil-or-ink-blog]

The Nereid and the Seachild

Day Four

When the boy woke the next morning, he was once more alone in the apartment. Another note beside his head had an address, a time, and a name. The boy’s stomach twisted as he sat up, looking around. At the bottom of the note, in the same scrawl from the morning before, Ione had written, “This woman can help you. I trust her deeply; you can trust her as well.”

He looked around, hoping to find his newest and only friend, but there was no indication of where she’d gone. She wasn’t in the water, and there were no footprints leading across the beach. Sighing deeply, he cut himself another serving of custard pie, showered, dressed, and lifted the paper. The back side contained a series of directions, and he steeled himself and left the apartment. The conversation on trust from the night before rang in his head, and it was his promise to try that ultimately pushed him out the door.

The address led him halfway across the city, to a small office building in a district he’d never been in before. A bell rang over the door, and he jumped at little. Don’t be stupid. Just keep going. He walked carefully up to the secretary, laying the paper on the counter and clenching his teeth. Every muscle in his body was tight.

A young man sat behind the desk, writing something neatly in a small, yellowed logbook, and when the boy placed his hands on the counter on either side of the paper the young man raised his head and smiled. “Good morning!” he said, his voice warm and open. “We’ve been expecting you – come right on back.” He stood closed the logbook over his pencil, ushering the boy through a long hallway to a door at the end with a gold nameplate that matched the name on the boy’s note. The young man knocked on the door three times, and then pushed the door in. “Your ten o’clock is here,” he said. A muffled voice responded within, and the boy was pushed inside.

The large room was decorated with hundreds of photographs of smiling, crying people, happy people, each holding a key in front of a new house. He examined the faces one by one, taking in the sheer elation, and suddenly feeling very out of place.

“I’ve helped all of those people get their first homes,” a voice said behind him, and he jumped again and turned around. A middle aged woman with dark skin and a bright pink suit stood behind him, her arms crossed over her chest. She greeted him with a wide, gentle smile, and motioned him toward a mahogany desk. “Come, sit,” she said. “Ione set up this appointment; did she tell you what I do?”

The boy shook his head and nervously followed her to the desk, slipping into the free chair as she walked around and sat on a large, inflated ball.

“I’m a caseworker. I used to work with families in the homeless community, but now I prefer to work mostly with homeless teens. I can help you get on your feet, and make sure you’ve got a place to live and can get back to school, if that’s what you want.” She cocked her head to the side. “What’s your name, honey?”

Again, the boy shook his head. The woman frowned lightly. “You don’t want to tell me? Nothing will hurt you here. We don’t care what you’re running from or how you ended up in this position; we’re just here to help you.”

The boy sank deeply into the armchair, trying to make himself as small as he could. Swallowing hard, he opened his mouth and took a breath, praying the sounds came this time.

“I don’t have a name.”

It wasn’t the best he’d done recently with speaking, but enough sound was there that the woman only looked at him in confusion for a second or two before getting it. The boy watched the recognition dawn on her face, and he felt his stomach twisting in knots.

“What do you remember of your past?” she asked, and the boy shrugged.

“The streets? The sea?” He didn’t elaborate, and the woman simply nodded and jotted a few notes down on a piece of paper.

“Alright. This might be a long shot, but…do you know how old you are?”

“Fifteen,” he whispered, his voice cracking. The woman’s eyebrows shot up, but she merely wrote it down on the paper.

“And you don’t know if you have any family?”

They boy shook his head once more. “I…” he started to say, and he stopped and cleared his throat, taking a deep breath. “I woke up one day, smashed against the cliffs, just in my clothes, spitting up saltwater. Couldn’t see well, my throat hurt when I talked, and all I remembered was my age, and my birthday. I don’t…know if I have family, or anybody else, or how I got there.” He looked down at his hands, and the woman was silent for a moment on the other end.

“How—how long ago was that?” she finally asked.

“A little over two years ago,” he muttered. It hadn’t been long after that morning that he’d curled himself up beside the bar and been woken in the middle of the night by the owner, who was just heading home. He’d taken the boy into the office and gotten him soda laced with something hard that burned his throat as it went down and made his head fuzzy. The owner had made the deal then, doing all the talking himself, barely waiting for the boy to even attempt an answer. It had saved the boy’s life, at the time. He had no doubt about that. But he kept this part of the story to himself as the caseworker nodded and wrote quickly in her notes. “Where have you been living?” she asked, finally.

“I live in an alley between a Greek restaurant and a butchery three blocks from my…from a bar. I don’t have a job. I get money sometimes cleaning up for…a shop. But not anymore. I don’t know how I’m going to eat now…”

The woman took a deep breath and finished writing before putting down her pencil. A remorseful look on her face, she reached forward with one hand to pat his wrist. “Don’t you worry about it, alright? I’m going to take care of everything for you.” She closed her folder and came around the small desk, leaning over and enfolding the boy in her arms. “I’m going to take care of everything for you,” she promised. Her warm hand stroked his hair gently and he let himself melt into the embrace, nodding softly.

~*~

A few hours later, the boy was in his first car, racing down the road toward his new life. “I think you’ll really like the place,” she said. “It’s just one of the many residences we own, and the other tenants are wonderful people. You’ll have you own kitchen and bathroom, and a rather spacious main room that will double as a bedroom. There’s a wonderful view of the sea from the back, and your own staircase going down to the beach.”

The boy’s stomach was knotted tighter with each word she spoke. He felt sick, and he didn’t know how to explain it.

He watched as the houses went by, familiar places that he’d walked past just this morning on the way to the caseworker’s office.

Please be there, he prayed silently. Please, don’t let your apartment be empty. His last hope was that the caseworker was merely taking him to another studio in the complex, but when she pulled in front of the building, smiled at him, and led him up to the second floor, he knew that wasn’t the case. She pulled a key from her pocket. “This is just a temporary place for you,” she promised. “It’s unfurnished; I have a handful of sources who can help you get a few key items, like a bed, a table, some kitchenware and appliances; everything you need. You’ll be allowed to take that all with you when you finally get your own place, but first, we want to get you into school. You’re too young yet to be out. I’ll work on that on my end while you settle in.”

She pushed open the door, leading the boy through to the empty room. His heart sank. The entire apartment was empty. The driftwood, sea glass, and polished stones were all gone. The gauze hangings and the large bed, the table where he’d shared several meals with the mysterious woman, utterly nonexistent. He walked past the caseworker, who was already beginning to dial her phone to find the resources she was after. He took the step up to the kitchen and looked out the glass back panels. He could see out to the sea, the calm waves lazily rolling toward the shore, and a single set of footprints, heading from the bottom patio all the way out to the water’s edge.

Something in his breath caught, and he sucked his lower lip in and chewed absently on it. “You’re real,” he whispered, his voice making no sound.

Slowly, he pulled away from the back windows, determined to make the most of this. He checked each of the empty cabinets, all of the drawers, and found nothing. The fridge, however, held the remains of that sumptuous custard pie, and silently, he thanked the ethers that he’d been given that much.

He closed the door up quickly, before the caseworker might notice and question, and he made his way back to the main room, checking the barren bathroom, and then the closet.

There, on the bottom, tucked away in the back, was his bag of clothes. Wrapped around it was a ribbon, tied with a note. He looked back, ensuring that the caseworker was busy with her phone call, before he unattached the note.

On the front, written in that same exotic scrawl, was a number. 1,000

The boy opened the card, his heart jumping in his chest.

My Dearest Seachild,

Many years ago, I loved a woman whose voice captivated me, and whose heart completed mine, and my father Nereus – the Old Man of the Sea – released me from my home so I could live with her. But then one day that love was lost. The only way to return to my home was to lend my aid to those in need. But, understanding who was in need, and who was simply motivated by greed…that was the hardest lesson I had to learn. Opening myself, and listening not to words, but to the soul, was the key to unlocking my freedom.

Some men speak loudly, my sweet seachild. But their souls are very quiet, and hard to hear over all the raucous coming from their mouths. But you were not that way. You spoke barely a word, and when you did, it came without sound. But your soul was the loudest I have ever heard, and I didn’t need to hear your words to know what you were saying. Someday, I hope that you will come and find me, deep in the water.

But even if that never comes to pass, remember that somewhere, out there, in the sea, swimming with dolphins, is your friend, the “mermaid”. Home at last. And you, my 1,000th soul, will always be welcome in my home.

Swim free,

Ione

The boy tucked the card away in his pocket, his hand running into the old candy wrapper that he didn’t remember her giving back to him. He closed his eyes, held that wrapper between his fingers, and mouthed a simple prayer:

Please thank her for me.

Somehow, he knew the message would get where it needed to be, and, taking a deep breath, he turned back to the caseworker, steadier now than he’d been in a long time, determined, and ready to move forward. After all, he had to learn to float on land before he could venture out into the sea, and someday, he very much wanted to visit his mermaid and all of her sisters in her home.

[pencil-or-ink-blog]

The Nereid and the Seachild

Day Three

The boy woke late in the morning, the sun shining through the glass paneling in the kitchen. He sat up and looked around, searching for a clock, but there was nothing to give him the time. Slowly, he stood, careful of his ankle and his ribcage. The pain wasn’t as bad today; the cold wasn’t down to his bones, amplifying every ache. A letter sat on a small table beside the bed, written with black ink on a reed-like sheet of paper. He inhaled deeply and read the archaic looking words.

“Good morning, Seachild,” it said. “Shower and help yourself to the cupboards. I’ll be back well after you leave for work, but I’ll be there tonight. Pack something for lunch. You’re still growing, and you need all the nutrients you can get.”

A light smile touched the boy’s lips, and he stood and limped his way to the bathroom, where he took an extended shower, enjoying the warmth of the heated water beating down on his body. The bruise around his ribcage looked worse than it had the day before, but when he examined himself with his fingers he couldn’t find anything broken. It was just sore, then; it would heal in time. His ankle, too, seemed merely sore. There was nothing swollen, and the heat seemed to help sooth it.

He put on his clothes from the day before and reached for his socks and shoes, but they had been taken away and replaced with brand new ones in his size. He chewed on his lower lip and looked around nervously. What was all of this for? Could this all be free? What was the catch? His heart fell deeply in his chest, but he obediently pulled on the fresh socks and new shoes. They fit comfortably, and when he stood and moved in them they didn’t pinch his feet. They were clearly designed for long-standing, and he decided it didn’t matter what the woman required of him in return. He would repay her kindness in any manner.

As he made his way up to the kitchen, he caught sight of a small, dark figure out in the water, swimming against the calm post-storm waves. Debris littered the sandy beach, but a single set of footprints was clearly visible leading from the back door down to the water’s edge. Is that where his mysterious benefactor had gone? Swimming?

It seemed to come natural to her, gliding through the water, deeper and deeper into the horizon, pushing the limits of surely the sea itself before allowing the waves to bring her back to shore, only to turn and swim out again.

He cut an oversized piece of custard pie from the glass platter left out on the counter and sat at the little table as he stuffed himself, eating with same ravenous intensity with which he downed every meal, never quite certain when his next might be. When he had finished, he made himself a sandwich with the flatbread from the night before, slathering it up with a cucumber yogurt dip and sliced meats. He wrapped this in plastic and foil and stuffed it into the pocket of his coat, estimating by the sun in the sky that he had a couple of hours before the owner would arrive at the bar. He would get there early, he decided, and sit in his usual place, enjoying the warmth of the sun on his skin. And besides, it would give him time to think about the woman.

~*~

When the boy arrived at work, however, the door was propped open with the broken chair, and a sign was posted on the wall saying, “Interviews inside.” Sighing, but curious, the boy made his way down the stairs and peeked into the main room, where the owner always made his interviews. His heart sank when he saw what was happening. A handful of men and women were standing behind the bar, showing the owner their skills and knowledge. They had not only lost an employee since last night, but they had lost the bartender. Suddenly, the boy felt very bad for being so frightened of him. The bartender had always been kind; he didn’t deserve to be treated with fear. And what had the boy really been afraid of? The bartender?

The vending machine?

The break room?

They’re just scapegoats and you know it. You’re afraid of life.

He ignored the words that flowed through his mind and changed quickly, slipping into the main room and beginning to set up. The owner told the interviewees to ignore “the boy” and focus on their actions. At least the boy could count on two things, he mused. It would be a blessedly slow day, it always was; and the prospect of a new hire meant that the break room would be abuzz with raunchy tales of ghostly mermaids. He smiled softly to himself and tucked his thoughts away in his work.

~*~

The boy was sent to his break that night with one of the bussers, a kind young woman with a dragon tattoo that snaked around her neck, who sometimes shared her food with the boy, and occasionally spoke to him – though he never spoke back. She sank immediately onto an old couch that had been left in the room some time ago, and she winked up at him.

“Having a good night?” she asked, and the boy gave her a smile and nodded before tucking into his sandwich.

They sat in easy silence, the busser pulling out an art pad and beginning to sketch something the boy couldn’t see from his broken chair, and the boy focused his attention on the vending machine. For the first time, he noticed the changes that must have occurred over the last couple of days. The green mold that had grown in the corners was gone, and enough of the caked-on grime had disappeared that the boy could just make out the logos of the chocolate bars inside: each bar had that blue-green background with the word Nereus written in the shape of seafoam. He wondered if they’d all turn to dust when opened, or if he’d been lucky.

The puzzling part was that the vending machine didn’t look as though it had been cleaned. There were no water streaks, or rag marks. The grime wasn’t washed away. Rather, it looked as though it simply had never been as bad as he remembered it.

He had an uneasy feeling, like the machine was watching him, and could see him. He turned away quickly, but the next ten minutes passed slowly, and he couldn’t stop thinking about the chocolate wrapper in his pocket.

He jerked up when heavy footsteps came into the room, but he sighed in relief when he saw it was just the new bartender, a young man with black curls and thick boots. The bartender tossed his apron onto a chair and lifted a couple of coins from his pocket, his eyes darting over the offerings in the vending machine. He made a weird face when he got through the last row, and the boy smiled softly to himself, ducking his head.

“I wouldn’t touch that, if I were you,” the busser said, putting away her art book. She had a hint of laughter in her voice, and the new bartender turned on her with a raised eyebrow.

“Why not? Is it broke?”

“Worse. It’s cursed.”

A chill went down the boy’s spine, and he leaned in closer. The incredulous bartender reached back to move his apron and slipped into the chair. “Cursed?” he asked, his interest clearly piqued. “By what?”

“The soul of an evil sea witch.”

They were joined by another woman, then, the DJ. The boy had never really liked her; she had only worked there for a few weeks but he caught the way she stared at him, like she couldn’t fathom why the bar put up with him. She crossed the room in a few strides, looking at the busser, then the bartender, and then the boy. She reached for her water and took a deep swig before putting a fist on her waist and frowning at the busser. “An evil sea witch?” she said. “Really?”

The busser shrugged, looked up at the clock, and sighed heavily. “Back to the grind,” she muttered. She tucked her hat onto her head, pulling her hair up beneath it, and smiled at the boy. “See you out there in a few minutes, kid.”

She sidled out the door, and the DJ shook her head and collapsed into the busser’s vacated seat.

“Don’t listen to her. There’s no sea witch,” she assured the bartender, flashing him knowing grin.

“Nah, man. Of course not,” the bartender said. His voice was full of false bravado, but he eyed the machine carefully anyway.

“It’s actually the spirit of a lost sea nymph,” the DJ continued. She leaned forward, her hands out to help narrate her tale. “You see, about fifty years ago there was this big battle between the land and the sea, and all the sea nymphs were called upon to fight for their asshole father, The Old Man. He threw them at the land like cannon fodder, bam! Their bodies bowling over the fisherman with their spears and the soldiers with their swords. Most of ‘em just crawled right back into the waters and swam back up to him, only be tossed back at the land. But one of ‘em, she was a real beauty…” the woman emphasized her breasts with her hands. “She wasn’t so lucky. Her first toss at the land had her impaled on a fisherman’s spear, and they dragged her back as their bounty, if you catch my drift. She died before she ever got back to the sea, but her spirit could never move on.” The DJ shrugged, leaning back and taking another deep drink from her water bottle.

“And now she haunts a vending machine?” the new bartender asked.

“Hell yeah. All lost souls end up here, eventually. Look at that kid over there. He’s practically a ghost already.”

Nobody had ever drawn attention to him like that before, and warning bells went off in his head as two pairs of eyes turned on him. He sat up, wrapping his coat further around him, his stomach knotting tightly. “He definitely looks like a ghost,” the bartender said, laughing, and a feeling of shame overcame the boy. He decided then that he didn’t like this man.

“Nobody even knows how long he’s been here. Don’t even know if he can speak English.” The DJ leaned forward and raised her voice. “Hey, you!” she called. The boy jumped, his chest tightening and his head growing fuzzy with panic. “Do you understand what I’m saying?”

She laughed too, and the bartender leaned over to jab the boy hard in the arm. “Well, he’s still solid!”

The boy jumped from his seat and ran out of the room, their voices following him down the hall. “Don’t run away,” they called. “We were just having some fun! Come back!” But his heart was beating too fast in his chest, and the hallway seemed to be closing in on him as he struggled to catch his breath.

Get out of here. Get out, now! Get out!

The boy found the owner behind the bar, manning it while his new hireling was busy still mocking the boy in the back room, their raucous laughter and the teases they said in his absence  trailing down the hall after the boy and making him wince. His breath came in ragged gasps, his body trembling, and he tried to call out to the owner. “Please, please,” he mouthed, no sound coming out. “I need you…please, I need you…” He tapped hard on the wall with both of his hands, repeating the gesture with insistence. The owner remained oblivious laughing and joking with the patrons, and the boy heard a voice call to him from the hallway.

The new bartender was sauntering down the hallway with the DJ. “C’mon, kid, you’re being stupid. Don’t freak out like that,” the man said, and the boy did something he was never allowed to do: he ran behind the bar.

He tugged on the owner’s sleeve, his body shaking hard, and tried to get the words out, motioning down the hallway and using his hands to try to explain – he was afraid; he couldn’t be alone with those two; he didn’t know what to do and he just wanted to go home, please, for once. His mouth worked frantically, small, high pitched sounds starting to come from somewhere in his throat, but no true words making it across.

“What the hell’s the matter with you?” the owner demanded. He tucked the bottle of gin he’d been pouring back into place and grabbed the boy’s arm tightly, his fingers digging into the boy’s tender skin, and dragged him off to the side.

The boy fought, terrified of going back down the hallway, but the owner yanked him forward and shoved him ahead, pressing him against the wall when they were far enough from everyone else.

“I ain’t got a clue what you’re tryna tell me, boy, and you’re drawing attention to yourself! Don’t you remember how dangerous I said this was? I don’t wanna have to fire you! Speak up! What in the world’s wrong with you?”

The boy shook his head and licked his lips, looking down the hallway. The new bartender and the DJ had stopped in their tracks, unseen yet by the owner, and the DJ was trying to drag the other man back in the direction of the break room. Her eyes were set in a threatening glare, and she shook her head at him.

He panicked, losing all control over his thoughts, and jumped away. He tried to book it into the main room, to find somewhere to escape to, somewhere to hide, but the owner grabbed his wrist before he could go run. He was jerked back, his shoulder almost dislocating with the force, and a wide palm slapped him across the face, knocking him head first against the wall.

The shock stopped him, and he slid to his knees, putting his arms up to cover his head.

“Shit,” the owner muttered over him. He leaned down, resting a hand on the boy’s back, but the boy remained crouched against the wall. He couldn’t look up; he was too busy trying to gather his thoughts, trying to stop the panic in his head. What are you doing? he demanded of himself. Why are you making a scene? Why couldn’t you just keep your head down and deal with it? You’ve been through worse. A few words and a good jab isn’t worth this kind of panic!

His breath came in ragged gasps, his body shaking, and he could barely get his head straight.

Finally, the owner stood, turning on the new bartender and the DJ. “What in the holy hell did you two do t’him?” he demanded, a low growl tinging his words.

The two stopped dead, and the boy peeked through his arms at them. “We were just having a little fun,” the DJ said, her voice small and defensive. “Alls we said is he looks like a ghost – and it’s true! I mean, look at him!”

“We weren’t tryna spook the kid or nothing. Just playing around with the little guy, that’s all…”

The owner flew into a rage. “You did WHAT?” he yell, punching the wall with his fist. Some of the plaster crumbled and fell, tickling the boy’s neck and making him shiver. The owner ignored the damage he’d done and advanced on the two suddenly remorseful figures, his finger up and in their faces. “I told you when I first hired you that I didn’t give a damn what you did on your own time, but you were t’leave the kid alone, didn’t I? That kid’s a better goddamned worker in one hour than either one a-you put together over your whole damned shift.”

He kept going, getting louder, peppering his language with obscenities as the patrons looked down the hallway at them, getting increasingly more nervous, and the boy shut his eyes and tried to drown out the noise, attempting desperately to hum as he rocked back and forth but managing only a small, high whine – more noise than he’d made in years.

Then, a hand touched down on his shoulder, and he jumped. The smell of the sea washed over him, and he looked up to see the woman’s eyes staring down at him with concern. She lifted him gently to his feet, and he tucked himself against her side. The strength of her arms around his back and the familiar scent of her skin gave him something to cling to, something concrete that he could use to center himself.

“You’re alright, seachild,” she whispered, and coming from her, he believed it. He evened his breath, and by the time the owner had returned – yelling over his shoulder about how easily they could be replaced, how he didn’t need them, yelling for them to pack their things and get out, that he’d manage just fine the rest of the night on his own and their positions would be filled before opening time tomorrow – the boy had calmed down enough to finally meet his employer’s eye.

The owner stopped in front of them, his eyes taking in the boy’s face, darting from the boy’s ruddy cheeks to the blood dripping from the boy’s right eyebrow where he’d struck the wall. “Please let me leave,” the boy mouthed, and the owner looked at him with a lost expression on his face.

“He asking for the rest of the night off,” the woman beside him said. “He needs rest, sleep. He needs to come home.”

“And who’re you?” the owner snapped, but even he winced at the harshness in his voice and he had the decency to look remorseful for it.

“I’m a friend,” the woman replied.

The owner licked his lips, looking around. The busser and her coworkers were gathered nearby, shocked at the events that were happening before them. The new bartender had a look of pure disbelief on his face that he’d lost the job so quickly – perhaps making a new record for the bar. The DJ herself had wide eyes, as she looked back and forth between the boy and her former employer.

“Are you gonna come back?” the owner asked. “Can I expect you tomorrow?”

The boy’s hand shot up to his smarting cheek, and he said nothing; he didn’t even attempt to move his lips. The owner nodded in understanding.

“Well, I can’t say as I blame you, but I’m sorry, and you gotta believe me on that.”

The boy nodded, and the woman leaned down to whisper in his ear. “Go, grab your things. Let’s leave this place, seachild.”

The boy’s heart beat faster as he realized he’d have to walk past the DJ and the new bartender to reach the manager’s office where he kept his bag of clothes, but the woman stepped forward, eyeing the two of them intently, and the boy could see the ocean in her eyes once more, the storm cresting over her pupils. “These two won’t bother you.” Her voice was cool and dangerous. “They won’t even dare to look at you.”

She nudged him forward, and he slipped down the hallway, staying close to the wall. He gathered his belongings quickly and ran back out to her. By the time he returned, the two who’d tormented him were long gone and the owner had gone back to work. He kept his eyes carefully on the bar, wiping down the same spot over and over again, as the boy followed the woman out into the night for the last time.

~*~

The boy hung his head on the way home, shame burning through his cheeks. Thinking back, he could barely believe he’d panicked the way he had. The new bartender and the DJ hadn’t meant any harm; they were being unkind, but he didn’t believe they would have hurt him. And now, they were both out of jobs, and so was he.

He inhaled sharply, the realization striking him, and he stopped in his tracks. He had no job. There would be no more money for food. He would starve on the streets. The panic started to rise up in him again, his breath coming in jerks, until the woman placed her hands on his shoulders and held him, gently, but firmly. “Calm, seachild. What’s the matter?”

He clenched his eyes shut and held his teeth together for a moment before finally shaking his head. “I have no home,” he mouthed. “And now I can’t even afford to feed myself. What am I going to do…?”

The woman leaned down and kissed his forehead. “You worry about things you’re too young to worry about. Why don’t you leave your future to me? I’m not going to let you fall.”

He shook his head, pulling away. He wrapped his arms around his chest, holding his bruised side and looking up at the thin strip of blue and gold in the distance, the last remnants of the sun that had already dipped well below the sea line. Soon, even that light would be gone, and the sky was clear enough for the stars to shine down. The boy heaved a sigh and looked at the woman. “I’ve never been able to trust anyone,” he said. The more he spoke, the more his throat was beginning to crack, and the more his words gained some semblance of audibility. Just around the edges, at the hard sounds, but enough that he didn’t feel like so much of a fool.

The woman ran her hand through his hair and nodded softly. “Trust is a fickle fiend. We’re all born with trust, but once it’s broken, we can’t simply put it back together. If we’re lucky in life, it’s only broken by one or two people, and we can still rely on others. But when we lose trust in the world, everything suddenly becomes sinister, tainted. It takes a great deal for us to ever trust anyone again. You’re very young, to have lost your faith in the world, but I know that it happens. You don’t have to believe me, but I’m going to make sure you’re alright, seachild. I can help you, if you can trust me long enough to work with me.”

Slowly, the boy nodded. “I…I’ll try.”

He followed her the rest of the way home, silent, deep in thought. As he waited for her to unlock the door, he finally gathered the courage to tug on the edge of her shirt. She pushed the door in and turned to him, smiling gently. “Yes?”

“D…do you have a name?” he squeaked out.

Her eyebrows rose in amusement and she pushed him lightly into the apartment. “My name is Ione,” she replied. “What about you?”

The boy swallowed hard and shrugged, but he didn’t answer. The woman, Ione, didn’t push him.

“Come with me,” she said, instead. “I want to tell you a tale.” She nudged him to follow her up to the kitchen, out the glass door in the back of the apartment, and down the stairs. He took off his socks and shoes and remained close behind her, still a little uneasy. He enjoyed the squish between his toes as he dug them into the wet sand, and let the woman lead him down the beach. The wind was biting, but the sky overhead was still clear, and now that the last of the light had disappeared, he could see every star in the night over their heads.

“Have you heard of the tale of the lost mermaid who wanders these shores, slipping into businesses and seeking other lost souls such as herself?” Ione asked.

The boy startled, looking up at her with shocked eyes, but said nothing.

“I think you have heard that myth,” she said with a knowing smile, tapping his nose with her finger. “Tell me, seachild, what have you heard?”

Slowly, with halting words and the barest whisper of a voice, he told her some of the stories passed around in the break room, delving deeper into detail on his favorite versions and skimming over those he didn’t like quite as much. He told her that the mermaid was a lost soul, a lover, a fighter, mere cannon fodder, and that she had died, killed herself, been murdered, or simply gotten lost. He told her how the mermaid haunted the bar, or perhaps haunted the vending machine in the back, always drawing people in to satiate her loneliness.

“I think she lives in the vending machine,” he said when he was done. His throat hurt now from overextending itself, but he didn’t stop. “I don’t know if she’s good, or bad, but…” He pulled the wrapper for the Nereus bar from his coat and offered it lamely up to her. “I think I woke her up, and I think she’s been watching me from it.” He told her quickly about how, since he spent the last of his money, the vending machine seemed alive, and it seemed to call to him. He told her how unnerved he had felt in the break room before the DJ and the new bartender had joined him. How that nervous feeling might have helped him overreact. 

In the end, the woman took the wrapper and looked at it, nodding softly. The boy looked away in shame, shrugging. “I don’t know…” he muttered.

“There are many tales around the docks,” Ione said, flattening the wrapper and running her fingers over the seafoam letters. “The fishermen speak of a siren who mourns for her lost lover and calls men overboard. In the canneries and the textile factories nearby, you hear tell of a selkie – it’s more exotic, gets the blood flowing better, but their story is just as rubbish. They say she yearns to return home, and is calling out for her family to come and find her, but her family has all been hunted to nothing by now and there is no family to return to. Still, it’s best to leave an offering out for her, so she thinks it might be one of her sisters, and never catches on to the ruse. Then there are the drunks, and the bars. They all lay claim to her, the mermaid of the land. There are as many stories as there are mouths to tell them, but not one of them has ever heard the true tale. It’s been ages since anyone spoke that, or bothered to look it up, and in time the tale has been twisted for the pleasure of the audience, each new author adding his or her own spin.”

The boy cocked his head to the side, intrigued, and he slipped a little closer. “What’s the real tale?”

Ione raised her head and looked out across the sea, the water beginning to lap at their feet as the tide came in. “It’s a much more complicated story, and the creature involved is neither a mermaid, nor a siren, nor a selkie, no matter what the other tales will say.” She breathed in deeply, and wrapped one free arm around the boy’s shoulders. “She was a Nereid, one of the fifty daughters of the Old Man of the Sea, and one day, she fell in love…”

~*~

The Nereids were a beautiful and kindly group of sea nymphs, the daughters of an old aquatic deity and an oceanid. They were worshipped by sailors and long known for offering aid when some unfortunate soul fell into the waters and risked drowning, bringing the helpless men back to their ships or to land. They spent their free time riding the dolphins and the hippocampi through the crystal waters of their home deep in the sea.

One day, one of these Nereids came too close to the shore. She was not paying attention to her surroundings as she made her rounds on her hippocampus steed, and an enchanting voice came out of the distance and fell upon her ears. She looked up and saw, there, on the land, a beautiful maiden. At once, the young Nereid fell in love. She returned to that spot daily to listen to the siren song from her hiding place behind an outcropping of rocks, her heart aching to join the young woman on land.

Finally, after almost a month of intense obsession, the Nereid went to her father, the Old Man of the Sea. She asked him for his blessing, to allow her to walk on land and woo this woman.

Unable to deny his daughters, the Old Man of the Sea agreed. But there was a price. She had to give up her life in the water. This was a terrible, distressing decision for the young Nereid, but in the end, her love won out. She pulled herself from the water, leaving her mother and her father, her sisters, her steed, all behind.

This is where you’d think the tale might take a sad turn. The Nereid learned that love is fleeting, or that just because you want someone doesn’t mean they want you as well, but this isn’t that kind of story. You see, the young woman the Nereid had fallen for, had long ago fallen for her, having seen the Nereid a hundred times from her window as the young sea nymph had made her rounds on her hippocampus, swimming with an adeptness you only gain from life in the water. The young woman’s song had always been for the Nereid.

They lived together for sixty peaceful, beautiful years. The young human woman grew old, and withered, and the Nereid stayed youthful, but the difference in their bodies never mattered to her, for she loved her human even more on that last day of her life than she had all those years ago, when she’s stumbled upon the young woman’s soothing voice. Even life outside of the sea was worth it, and she could always go for a swim if she needed to feel the water over her skin.

But there was a dark cloud of some sort hanging over her head, waiting to steal her happiness. As the human woman grew closer and closer to death’s door, and the Nereid stayed forever youthful, a deep depression came over the old woman. Every morning, afternoon, and evening, the Nereid would go to every extreme to prove her love to this woman, but that dark stain of doubt had settled into the old woman’s soul. After all, she was no longer young, and beautiful. Her voice was rattled constantly with cough. She could not keep up with the youthful Nereid on land or in the waters. And hadn’t she stolen the Nereid from her true family? Isolated the Nereid on land? How could anyone love her still?

The Nereid watched as her lover grew more and more distant, until one night, she woke – alone – in their shared bed. She followed her lover’s footsteps out the old door in the back of their cottage, up the cliff side, to where her lover stood with outstretched arms at the very edge of the very farthest cliff.

The Nereid could not walk or run fast enough to catch the woman she loved. She could not scream loud enough to be heard over the rush of the wind, the waves, and the oncoming storm. She could do nothing to stop what happened in front of her very eyes.

For a decade, nearly two, she wandered the shore, cursing the name of every god she’d ever known. She cursed her father, and each of her sisters, and she cursed her lover for not trusting her.

And then, one day, she came to her senses. She walked out in to the water, and called to her father as she had not done in nearly eighty years.

Her father came to her at once, embracing her with his warm arms. “My daughter,” he said to her. “Your heart aches, for you know the love of a mortal, and you know the pain it always brings.”

She begged him to explain why he’d allowed her to leave, but what right was it of his to deny her? If he had, would she not simply have gone away without his permission? She begged him to allow her to return home, but he reminded her of the stipulation of their agreement.

“Is there no way around this, then?” she asked, not daring to truly hope, but for a long while her father thought on these words, truly contemplating what could be done.

“There is one way you can return home,” he said. “When you lived in the waters, it was a part of your life to save those drowning from the imminent death that faced them. In your time on land, your sisters have all carried on without you. A thousand souls you could have saved instead fell upon your sisters’ overworked arms. If you can rescue as many drowning souls on land as you would have in the water, then you may return home to the seas and live the rest of your days with your family.”

“But how do I find a thousand drowning souls on land?” she asked. “People don’t drown on land…”

But her wise father replied, “They do not drown with water in their lungs, but with the difficulties of life filling them.”

Immediately, the young Nereid began to set about helping every man, woman, in child she came across. Some of them needed her, some did not, and some merely took advantage of the help she was willing to offer, using her as a crutch to avoid truly living their own life. When she figured that she must surely have saved a thousand souls, she swam out again into the waters and called for her father. But he did not come.

She returned to the land again, more discriminating in her actions this time, attempting to put her efforts where they were needed most, but even still, she had trouble discerning those in true need from those who simply did not want to help themselves.

Finally, one night, she swam out to the sea and called on her father one last time. “I’m no good at this,” she told him when he arrived. “I must have aided a hundred thousand by now, but none of them fulfil my requirements. It’s easy to tell a drowning man in the water, but how do you know a drowning man on land?”

Once again, her wise father smile gently and replied with calm words: “You listen,” he said. “They will tell you surely enough.”

“But all of them say they are needy.”

“With their words,” he reminded her. “Don’t listen to their words. Listen to their hearts, for the heart does not tell a lie.” He kissed her forehead and sent her back to the land one last time.

Now, the Nereid wanders, searching for true lost souls, drowning in a world that wants to bury them. When their hearts cry out to her, she comes, seeking for her 1000 drowning souls, still aching to return home at last. And every once in a while, when she feels like she’s drowning herself, her father will come to the land and send one lost soul, deeply in need, in her direction, so that she’s always moving forward, slowly, slowly, achieving her goal.

~*~

The boy’s mind raced with confused thoughts as Ione led him up the stairs and into the apartment. He washed his feet off in the bathtub, and they ate roasted lamb and potatoes. He kept a careful eye trained on her at all times, on the half-horse-half-fish tattoo on her arm, and on the way she moved like she was swimming through the air itself. He thought about her smell, how her skin was like the sea, and how her eyes could become stormy.

When she helped him into bed later that night, he asked the question that had been gnawing on his mind. “Are you the Nereid from the story?” His vocal chords, exhausted from his attempts at speaking today, had altogether given out, but she didn’t seem to need to hear him to understand what he was saying. Perhaps she was listening not to his words, but to his heart.

She laughed softly. “Do I look like a sea nymph to you?” she asked, and he frowned.

“I don’t know what a sea nymph looks like,” he said, getting very tired and slowly slipping toward the blackness of his dreams. “But I wished on a candy bar that looked like the ocean and then you came into my life and got the water out of my lungs, so…”

“Shh,” he heard, the last thing before he went under. His dreams that night were soft dreams of swimming in a wide open sea, the spray of the water in his face, the sun beating down on him, and everything was free and safe at last.

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So my stories will post here and other places every Friday, but if there’s anyone interested in getting early access to “Day Three” of The Nereid and the Seachild, it’s up on my patreon account right now for $1 supporters.

If anyone’s interested: https://www.patreon.com/LVAna

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What “Rejection” Really Means

For weeks I’ve been judging a large contest. I’ve had to “reject” thousands of stories.  I hate the word “reject,” because it doesn’t really express what I want to say.

Very often I will read the opening to a story and it is obviously the first work of a very young writer.  It may have a multitude of problems—from simple typos, to a lack of understanding as to how to set a scene, to clunky dialog.  I know that I can’t accept the story for publication, but at the same time, I wish that I could shout some encouragement to the budding writer, much the way that my mentor Algis Budrys did to a young Stephen King.

I think that people need encouragement. It may be the only thing that will spur a young writer to greater effort.

So what does the word “rejection” mean to you as a writer?  I think it’s simply, “Try harder.”

A lot of fine works get rejected.  The best-selling works in nearly every genre experienced rejection.  Lord of the Rings was rejected by several American publishers.  Dune was rejected by all of them.  Gone with the Wind made its rounds through every major publisher.  Harry Potter was rejected by all of the biggest houses, and Twilight was rejected by a dozen agents before it got picked up—yet all of these novels became the best-sellers in their fields.

So does that mean that these were all bad novels?  Of course not.  It means that the author didn’t find an editor with a matching taste, a matching vision, right at the first.

Very often when I read a manuscript that is close to being publishable, I think, It’s a shame that the author didn’t try a little harder to …  That’s what “rejected” means to me.

I was once talking to international best-selling author Laurell K. Hamilton and asked her to confirm a rumor that I’d heard.  With her first novel, she received over 200 rejections before she made a sale.   She said, “When people tell me that they’ve been rejected five or ten or twenty times, I just tell them that I don’t want to hear about it.”

Laurell has the perfect attitude toward rejection.  Try harder.

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Prompt Batch #42

Theme: Miscellaneous

1. “Oh, you’re coming. Even if I have to drag you through the snow in your pajamas.”

2. “You’re not a stranger anymore; you’re like family to us.”

3. “It’s about time. We were expecting you–and you’re late.”

4. “I don’t recommend making any friends while you’re here.”

5. “What does it matter? It’s my decision, isn’t it?”

6. “But that’s against the rules. I thought you were one to actually follow those.”

7. “If we’re going to get caught, it’d probably be there. So that’s a bad idea.”

8. “Don’t you think it’s about time we started heading back?”

9. “Do you mind if I took a look?”

10. “This time is going to be different, and I mean that.”

11. “Why do they pay so much attention to you?”

12. “How am I supposed to know? It’s a mystery to me, too.”

13. “My dear, why the long face?”

14. “It appears as if I’ll have to come back another time.”

15. “Persistent, aren’t they?”

16. “So, what was it that we needed to talk about?”

17. “Would you like to explain why you just put a hole in my wall?”

18. “If you really love me like you say you do–prove it.”

19. “Not long … not long at all.”

20. “I think you’d be safer here, with the others.”

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Hi Kay! I’m L.V., and I’m also a writer! I’ll check out your stuff and you can come check out mine!

mmmmn, a new writeblr?

my name is Kay, i’m 21, and i write genre-melding sci-fi / fantasy / historical / horror fiction with lots of monster boys, eldritch beings, and hideous period fashion trends. sometimes, all three at once. because why not.

i’d appreciate if you reblogged this post if you’re a writeblr, bookblr, or someone who supports writeblrs, so i can see who else is out there. 

if you love fae, zombies, aliens, orcs, lizardfolk, or stuff of that ilk, then i love you!

as for icebreakers:

check out my two wips here!

i’m also a sorta artist and a beginner programmer. all of my codes are writing resources, so feel free to take a gander.

I love “-punk” worlds and making new types of punk worlds.

i also really like video games, mtg, d&d, seinen manga, and Nina Zenik.

i’m super excited to meet and talk to more of you guys, and read all about your wips!

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One of my favorite books. <3

“I could tell you it’s the heart, but what is really killing him is loneliness. Memories are worse than bullets.” - Carlos Ruiz Zafón, The Shadow Of The Wind

via @violentwavesofemotion

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Hey, sometimes you gotta do what works.

#how to get yourself to write

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My imaginary friends <3

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The Nereid and the Seachild

Day Two

The boy woke early the next morning, soaked to the bone, the pain in his ankle and side amplified from the cold and the wet. Shivering, he stood and limped his way back through the city, searching at every turn for a glimpse of the sea to guide him. As he grew close, he could hear the sound of bells from the docks, and he used that to lead his way like the point of a compass.

The bar was an old wooden structure that had stood in that location for over a century. The owner sometimes spoke of the grandeur of its early life, how his great-grandfather had created a warm and welcome atmosphere for all the rowdy sailors returning from long voyages and aching for a stiff drink, their pockets full of coin quickly burning a hole in the thin cloth.

Now, the wood was warped from a hundred years of saltwater wind and heavy rainfall. This close to the docks, none of the buildings fared well for long. And where it had once been a bustling first stop for many returning sailors, it was now mostly frequented by anyone who couldn’t afford the better bars that could be found both up and down the block.

Still, the boy looked on the place as a safe haven, the only real port he had in his messy life, and when he hobbled up to the groaning structure, he sighed in relief, pressing his hand against the wood, still saturated from last night’s storm, to reassure himself he wasn’t simply hallucinating.

The winds were beginning to pick up again, icy rain battering his face, so he settled himself beside the back entrance, sitting on an upturned bucket left out for the smokers on break, and hunkered down for three hours of waiting before the owner arrived and let him in. He slept sporadically, having slept very poorly the night before between his throbbing side, the sharp pains in his ankle, and the awful nightmares.

Occasionally something would pull him from his dreams and he’d look around – a particularly strong gust; shouting from the street; the bugle call announcing the arrival of The Commodore out in the port – but he always fell back asleep quickly. Once, he thought he saw the woman standing over him, her hands tucked into the pockets of her coat, but when he looked again there was nothing there.

It must have been a dream.

Finally, a set of heavy footsteps dragged him from the last of his sleep, and he stood up and straightened his clothes as the owner pulled his keys from his pocket and nodded once at the boy. “You gonna be falling over again tonight, or are you gonna be alright?” the owner asked, and then, remembering the boy didn’t speak, he repeated only the last question: “You gonna be alright?”

The boy nodded quickly, and the owner grunted. “Well good. Tonight’s set to be a busy one. Got the new ship that just came in, so I expect you to be at the top of your game.” He pushed in the door and ushered the boy in first, quickly locking it up behind them.

There was a coat closet in the manager’s office. The owner had always been kind enough to allow the boy to keep his most important belongings hidden away there. He wouldn’t let the boy sleep in the bar at night, but the boy could store his clothes, his spare money, whatever he needed. He changed quickly in the bathroom, using soap and water to clean himself before getting right to work, pulling down chairs and bar stools and relining trash cans that had lain empty all night.

Silently, the owner and the boy went about their own business, each focused on their opening tasks. As the other employees trickled in, the boy gained the courage to put his coat in its spot in the back of the break room, beside the vending machine. As quickly as he slipped in, he slipped out again.

The ancient machine made him even more nervous, now. He didn’t want to be alone with it.

~*~

Every night, the boy worked for the bar from when it opened at one in the afternoon to when it closed at three in the evening. The extra-long shift made up for the fact that the owner paid him half what he paid the other employees. “Look, kid, there’s no way you’re legal. I could get in a lot of trouble hiring you like this. If anybody found out, I could lose my license. I’ll pay you under the table, but I get half your paycheck – you know, for all the risk I’m taking. You’ll get four bucks an hour. But, if you’re good, I’ll stack up your hours. It’ll even out. You’ll be fine.”

It seemed like a fair enough deal. The boy kept his head down and worked hard. He didn’t notice when the woman came in again, her long legs making slow, even strides down the concrete steps and sweeping across the cramped floor like a dancer. He didn’t notice as she settled into the same spot at the bar, sipping on another whiskey and coke as she watched him, this time with a look of finality in her eyes. She had made her decision.

The boy didn’t notice woman at all, until a drunk customer knocked into him as he was pushing his way through the crowd with a broom, heading for a mess at the table nearest the bathrooms. The customer laughed uproariously and weaved his way to the bar, but the woman caught the boy in her hands and helped right him. He came eye to eye with the wild horse fish on the woman’s arm, and slowly he lifted his gaze to her face. For a moment, the world stopped. He could hear the sounds of the ocean in his head, and her dark eyes seemed to hold the ferocity of a tumultuous sea.

The bartender’s voice broke through the cresting waves in his mind. “Hey, kid! You alright?”

He came to, looking up at the bartender before quickly nodding and pulling away. He tucked his head and got back to work, but the rest of the night he could feel her eyes on him. Every time he looked, there she was, sitting at that bar and watching him with the same intensity.

She stayed the entire night, and between her and the vending machine on his breaks, the boy barely got a moment to calm his mind and breathe. Somehow, he made it through his shift without the owner threatening to send him home, and when it was finally closing time and the woman was gone, leaving him alone with the bartender, the boy was able to finish his tasks in peace.

“Where are you going tonight?” the bartender asked when the boy was finally done, and the mop and broom were locked away in their closet once more. The boy shrugged by way of answer and disappeared down the hallway. He could hear the soft buzz of electricity running through the vending machine, and for a long moment he stood in the doorway, looking up at it and wishing he hadn’t left his coat in there.

It took him too long to garner the courage to rush in and grab it, but when he turned to run out again he nearly ran head first into the bartender, who was suddenly blocking the doorway.

The boy sucked in his breath, his heart jumping in his chest. He shot a quick look at the vending machine, his eyes wide, before turning back to the bartender’s tall form taking up the entire opening. He stepped back.

“Does it spook you?” the bartender asked, motioning with his head toward the unnerving object in the corner. The boy gave no answer, and the bartender sighed. “What’s your name, kid? How old are you? Where do you live? How did you end up in this job?”

The boy opened his mouth to speak, his lips forming the words, I don’t know…, but no sound came from his throat and he felt the panic rise through his body, up his limbs, through his throbbing ankle and aching side. Finally, the bartender nodded and stepped out of the boy’s way. After one more glance back at the vending machine, the boy slipped out of the room, giving the bartender a wide berth before taking the employee exit and running into the night, his heart racing in his chest.

He stopped against the wall of the building next door, leaning over and bracing with one hand against the bricks, his free hand covering his ribs. He breathed deeply, working the stress of being cornered by the bartender out of his system. Overhead, the black sky poured rain and hail onto him, and the wind picked up. His heart sank; another sleepless night awaited him, and tomorrow, he would wake with an empty stomach and another day yet to go before the owner paid him his share. The boy collapsed to his knees, the water soaking through his thin pant legs, and for a moment he let the panic rush over his body again. He couldn’t tread this, couldn’t stay afloat in his own life anymore, and he wasn’t sure where to turn for help.

A gentle hand rested on his shoulder, and he jumped, looking up. The woman was crouching down beside him. She smelled of the ocean, of seaweed and brine, and he sniffed in hard and let her help him to his feet. Her hand brushed the wet hair from his face, and when he trembled from the cold and the uncertainty in his bones she simply nodded and pulled him into her chest, wrapping her arms around his back and embracing him.

At first, he didn’t know what to do with the motion. He hadn’t been held like this in longer than he could remember. Slowly, slowly, he lifted his hands to her sides, still tense and unsure. But the longer the woman held him, the calmer he felt, the easier it was for him to slip his arms around her back and hold her tightly in return.

This felt safe, and that wasn’t a feeling he had very often.

When she pulled away, it was too soon. He didn’t want to let go. But he tucked his arms around himself and looked at the ground, ducking his head and examining his feet carefully, focused on his old, grayish shoes with the holes that let the water in and kept him freezing on nights like this.

“Come on, then,” the woman said gently, and he looked up in time to catch her motion for him to follow. Swallowing hard and looking around, the boy obeyed.

~*~

They trailed through the winding backroads along the waterfront, away from the main nightlife filled with restaurants, bars, tattoo parlors, and convenience stores. They passed through the canneries, and up into the beachfront district. The winds swirled around them, but the gusts themselves never seemed to touch him; so long as he stayed close by her side, he could handle the cold.

The woman stopped at an old apartment complex, with peeling paint and wood warped from thirty years beside the saltwater, bearing the brunt of the storms that rolled in off the coast. It was pressed against the sea, its far edge touching the beach, with only a thin strip of land between it and the water. It lacked even the minimal protection from the sea the bar enjoyed, being set back from the docks by a few blocks of buildings.

She unlocked a door and led him up a steep, narrow staircase, to a creaking top floor. The wallpaper was peeling inside the dim hallway, the flowering pattern yellowed with time, and water damage seeped through the ceiling. The woman tugged lightly on his shirt, motioning him through a narrow doorway.

The woman lived in a large, comfortable studio, decorated with driftwood tied carefully to the walls and glass bowls and vases full of sea glass and shiny, polished stones. There was a main room with an enormous bed, sectioned off from everything else with light, gauze-like tapestries that hung from the ceiling, and to the side was a small bathroom. A raised platform in the distance held a kitchen that overlooked the beach. It was dark, but he could still make out the waves cresting on the sand as lightning struck and lit up the night sky.

He jerked back, hitting the wall behind him, his heart thumping in his chest. A roll of thunder came through and shook his bones, and his breathing grew unsteady.

The woman stopped halfway from the door to the kitchen, turning to face him. “It’s alright,” she said. “It can’t hurt you tonight. This room will protect you. Come in; take a seat. I’ll make us some dinner.”

Hesitantly, the boy pushed himself away from the wall. There was a small card table beside kitchen’s raised platform, with two folding wooden chairs, and he took a seat in one of the chairs and watched the woman as she moved about the elongated space with the strength and flexibility of a dancer, or perhaps a swimmer. He was entranced with her, his eyes unable to look away as she pulled two fish from a small icebox and prepared them on the counter with adept knife cuts. Each of these was pan fried with a few pinches of seasoning and some ripe, cut lemons. While the fish cooked itself in the pan, she deftly cut up vegetables, tossing them together for a quick salad. It took no more than fifteen minutes for everything to go from the ice box to the table, and the boy dug in greedily, his grateful stomach growling its impatience. A basket of flatbread was placed on the table between them, and the boy ate until his stomach was full to bursting, that sick, full feeling overtaking him a second time.

There was no more conversation between him and the woman. She snuffed out all of the lights and helped the boy to his feet, bringing his sore body to the bed and pulling off his coat, shoes, and socks. She tucked him in, stroking his hair and leaning over to kiss his forehead. “Sleep, and dream, child of the sea,” she whispered.  

The familiar words jerked him awake, but she pushed him down lightly when he sat up, and soon the cocoon of warmth overtook him, and he drifted into an easy sleep. That night, his dark, surreal nightmares were replaced with vivid images of a group of fifty beautiful young women, swimming through the crystal blue waters of a distant land, riding steeds that were a mix of horse and fish beneath the watchful gaze of a shapeshifting figure who, at one point, seemed to turn to smile at the boy. Rest well, seachild.

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The Nereid and the Seachild

Day One

In the back of the bar, tucked away in a corner of the employee break room, covered in years of dust and mildew, there was an old vending machine. Nobody knew how long it had been there, and nobody had ever seen anyone come to restock it, and as such, nobody ever touched the thing. It sat there, soaking up the flickering power through the socket in the wall, the glass sometimes bumping with the bass from the heavy music that came from the main floor, shifting through the very walls and making the machine jump like it was dancing and didn’t care who watched.

Some of the employees talked about it on their breaks, passing jokes about how it was haunted, how it contained the ghost of a mermaid who’d washed up on shore half a century ago and died, her lost spirit settling here, where lost spirits always seemed to find themselves.

The boy liked the stories the men and women told. He liked the rough way they spoke, coloring their tales with a spattering of foul language and vulgar hand movements. He watched them from the broken metal chair in the corner opposite the mysterious vending machine. Nobody ever occupied that chair; nobody would sit on it, afraid it might break beneath them. The boy didn’t like standing too much, though, and his bones always needed a break after the first seven hours of cleaning the floor, the bathrooms, and the abandoned tables, so he’d sink his weary frame onto the metal surface carefully so as to not dislodge the weakened legs too much.

He preferred it when he was given a break with another employee or two. He liked the company, though he never spoke, and he liked the tales they told.

But sometimes, the floor was too busy to let too many people go at once, and the boy found himself alone in the break room, with nothing but the soft buzz of electricity from the vending machine and the beat of the bass thumping through the room.

He hated those times, hated those breaks. He always found himself staring at the looming machine at the far back of the room, locked eye-to-eye in a staring contest with something he wasn’t quite convinced was truly inanimate. In those times, the boy felt a deep, stirring need to reach out, to touch the cracked plastic and grungy glass. He wondered what the chocolate bars inside were like. Had they disintegrated to dust? Or did the ghost of the mermaid keep them in some magical stasis?

Often, he wouldn’t even make it to his chair in the corner. If he was alone, he might spend the entire break facing the machine, wide-eyed, as the bulky object called to him like a siren. Come, it whispered. Come to me, child of the sea.

“No,” he would mouth, his rusty voice never cracking enough for sound to attach itself to the words. He hadn’t spoken, really spoken, in years. Sometimes, he wondered if he still could. Even the morning he was given this job hadn’t pulled any words from his mouth; the owner had simply taken pity on him, on his starving form sleeping in the alley near the employee entrance, and offered him a little bit of pay for a little bit of work.

The boy always knew that one day, he would give in. He would cross the room to that haunted box, and he would answer its siren call. He hadn’t expected today to be that day.

He was alone, staring up at the vending machine, his empty stomach churning in pain, his buzzing head faint and dizzy, a single coin weighing down his pocket, teasing him, for what could he buy with a single coin? Nothing, but a chocolate bar from the vending machine in the back of the employee break room.

Years later, he would blame the state of his mind for his actions that night.

He took a deep, shuddering breath and let it out, his feet shuffling slowly toward the looming object. He kept peeking over his shoulder, waiting for someone to come down the hallway and interrupt him, saving him from himself. But nobody came. The boy was alone, and quickly, his hand darted out, the single coin held tightly between his white fingers. He heard the clink as it fell through the slot, and he licked his dry lips and swallowed hard.

He couldn’t see what choices lied within through the thick caking of dust from years of disuse, but he could see that every row and every column was filled with some shape, so he threw caution to the wind and pressed a number at random.

The machine whirred to life, creaking and groaning as it performed actions it hadn’t been asked to perform in longer than anyone could remember. At first, the boy wasn’t sure if it would move at all, but then he could see the subtle shifting somewhere in the middle row, just to the left. It edged closer, a rectangular shape, and fell, with a thud, to the bottom of the machine.

The boy took a deep breath, knelt down, and pulled the bar of chocolate from the slot.

Nereus, it said, in large, white letters, twisted into the shape of seafoam, cresting over blue-green background. The chocolate inside was firm, solid, but not rock hard. Perhaps, beyond all miracles, it was still good. The boy had never heard a Nereus Bar before, but it didn’t matter, as long as he could eat it.

He held the bar close to his heart, pressed between his hands, and he opened his cracked lips to mouth a silent prayer. Please, he almost-whispered. Please. I need something good to come into my life. I’m drowning, and I don’t know if I can keep treading this water. Please, let something good happen.

He took the candy bar over to the trashcan in the corner and slowly peeled back the paper and foil, tucking the wrapper deep into his pocket. The chocolate had a strong, enticing scent, rushing to his head, but before he could lean down and take that first bite, it fell to dust in his fingers and sprinkled the top of the trash with chocolate dust.

The boy’s heart sank in his chest, his hopes of one small meal fallen. He dragged himself over to the broken, metal chair and sank slowly into it, defeated, his stomach growling in protest. He had nothing to offer it, and would have nothing for another two days as he waited for his paycheck to arrive.

When his twenty minutes was up, he slowly dragged himself back to the main floor, leaving his coat on the chair, and taking his broom with him as he went.

~*~

The music thumped through the bar, the rowdy patrons arguing loudly with each other just to be heard over the thick bass, and every jostle and sound got to the boy. His stomach was sick now with hunger, ready to heave its emptiness onto the floor in front of him, and his head was spinning. He tried swallowing to gain a little of his senses back, but his dry mouth would have none of it, and he only succeeded in choking on his throat. The owner had offered him the rest of the night off twice now, but each time the boy had shaken his head and doubled down in his work.

Every hour he lasted was another few dollars in his paycheck, and he needed that money. He needed it desperately.

When the owner finally left for home, well before the bar would close, he offered the boy the rest of the night off one last time, but when the boy yet again shook his head, he gave up, shrugged on his thick coat, and left through the back entrance. The boy breathed a sigh of relief. He didn’t have to worry about being thrown out any longer; he just had to worry about staying upright and making it through the next five hours. 

He didn’t notice when the doors opened and a tall, svelte figure sauntered down the stairs into the cramped enclosure. He didn’t notice this figure sidle up to the bar and order a drink. He didn’t notice the way she eyed him, sipping slowly at her whiskey and coke as she examined his drooping form with the careful precision of one who had an important choice to make. The boy didn’t notice any of this; his whole attention was focused on surviving as he mopped the same space of floor over and over, having already forgotten what spilled in the first place.

~*~

Somehow, the boy managed to survive those last five hours. At the end, once all of the patrons had been ushered out onto the streets and the boy had only to clean the tables, put up the stools, sweep up the debris, and be on his way, he finally felt a pair of hands descend onto his shoulders. He jumped, his foggy mind grasping at some logical explanation for the interruption, but it was just the bartender, a young man with red hair and a bright curly beard. He smiled gently at the boy, and motioned with his head toward a seat at the bar.

“Come have a seat,” he said, an accent to his voice that the boy took great solace in. “You can get back to this in a minute,” he said.

Without waiting for a response, the bartender gently nudged the boy forward, leading his wobbly frame to a stool and helping him sit before jogging around to the other side of the bar and filling a clean glass with ice and coke with a deftness that comes from knowing your job well. The bartender had been here the second longest of anybody, aside from the owner himself. While most employees left after a month or two, moving on to bigger and better things, or at least moving as far away from the bar as they could, the bartender himself had managed almost six months. It was unheard of, but the boy had grown accustomed to his smiling face.

The boy himself, of course, had been there longer than all of them, almost two years, listening as the stories of the vending machine and its mermaid spirit were passed down to each new group of hirelings, twisted with each tongue that spun the yarns.

The boy swooned for a moment as a wave of nausea overtook him, and he grabbed onto the bar to keep from falling over. Without hesitation, the bartender reached over and put a hand on the boy’s upper arm to help steady him, the other palm going to the boy’s forehead to check for a temperature.

“Why are you out there working like this if you’re clearly not feeling well?” he asked, but the boy pulled away from the hand and rested his chin on the bar, looking around. He caught a whiff of something nearby, something tantalizing, and he perked up a little, looking around with desperation. Beside him, about an arm’s length away, was a paper take-home box. Steam wafted from the crack in the square clamshell, and when the bartender shook his head and turned back to the glass of coke the boy jerked his hand out and dragged the box closer.

The bartender laughed, depositing the drink on the wooden surface and passing it over to the boy. “Go ahead,” he said, even as the boy yanked his hand back, hiding it in his lap and looking away from the unoffered meal. The bartender opened the clamshell. “It’s for you. One of the patrons tonight came back when I was closing up and asked me to pass that along to you. It’s all yours.”

The boy looked, hardly believing, but there was no trick in the bartender’s eyes. He pulled the box of food toward him and eyed the thick, juicy burger and abundancy of golden fries, before reaching in and stuffing the food into his eager mouth, stopping only long enough to wash it down with a large swallow of coke now and again.

The boy ate quickly, and he ate everything, his extended stomach aching now with the fullness it wasn’t accustomed to. When he was done, he sat back and frowned at the empty container. If he’d just bothered to save some, he could have eaten tomorrow too, but saving food never seemed to go over with him. As soon as it was in his hands, he swallowed it, barely stopping long enough to chew.

Finally, he looked around. His head was beginning to clear up, and he wanted to take stock of how much work there really was left to do. But when he turned on the barstool to face the main floor, his stomach cramped in guilt and inadequacy. The bartender had finished bussing the tables and was sweeping the last of the debris into a dustpan on the far side of the main floor. The boy ducked his head, shameful over his inability to simply tend to the tasks of his job. 

The bartender came back, smiling brightly, and looked over the boy’s shoulder. “You done?” he asked, taking away the empty container of food and tossing it in a trashcan as he swept around the bar and quickly wiped it down. “Listen, don’t worry about tonight. I’ll let the boss know you stayed the full time and finished up. You look ready to keel over. You should go home and get some rest, alright?”

The boy winced lightly, but nodded, standing and slipping into the employee room to collect his coat. He was too deeply caught in his thoughts to look at the vending machine, to notice that some of the dust had begun to clear away, the mildew pulling back into the corners and disappearing. He wrapped himself up, oblivious to the whirring machine in the corner, and took the back exit out of the bar, avoiding the bartender as he slipped deeper and deeper into depression. He disappeared into the cold fall night, into the wind, the darkness, and the light smattering of rain that was just beginning to drizzle from the sky.

~*~

That night, for the first time, the boy saw the woman who had been eyeing him at the bar, the woman who had bought him food and handed it to the bartender outside as he’d been locking up. She was standing across the street, just outside of a used bookstore, her still form holding strong in the heavy winds even as the lampposts themselves shook in their encasements.

The boy was hunkered down behind a set of crates, against a dumpster, in his usual alley. He pulled his coat over him like a blanket, his arms through the sleeves to hold it in place, and watched her with intense curiosity. Her hair blew about, whipping around her face, and her clothes seemed to want to fly away with the spare newspapers and other trash debris, but she stood still, her eyes meeting his directly.

He was too exhausted to be concerned by her strange and sudden appearance in his life, and he didn’t know something was wrong around him until the expression on her face changed and twisted, her attention drawn up.

He looked in time to brace himself against a blow. His coat was yanked from him, held in place only by his arms, and a surge of panic rushed through his nerve endings. His muscles jumped and twitched as he struggled to understand what was happening, but he had enough sense to hold tight to the coat even as the stranger yanked on it, kicking at the boy’s side to force him to let go. “C’mon…c’mon,” the stranger grunted, desperately. “Just give it to me!” But the boy held tight, shielding his face as best as he could and crossing his arms.

The wind picked up, blowing in a different direction now, and the icy rain hit the boy’s face with a ferocity he hadn’t expected. His attacker was blown off balance, falling to the ground, and when the boy pushed himself back against the brick wall between the dumpster and the wooden crates and looked up, he saw the woman standing over the man, staring at him intently. There was a dark shape on her arm, a half-horse-half-fish creature that seemed to rear up in indignation as her muscles clenched and unclenched.

The man spooked, his eyes going wide, and he stood up and ran in the other direction. The boy’s heart pounded in his chest, a tight ache rivaled only by the sharp pains in his side from the man’s thick boot.

The woman turned her gaze on the boy again, and the boy’s body tightened, his breath catching in his throat. There was something about her eyes – something that terrified him. They contained a storm, capable of blowing him away as easily as she’d blown away his attacker, and when she took a step toward him, the boy leapt to his feet and jumped the crates, falling hard on his ankle on the other side. He ignored the sudden jab of pain, ignored his side, ignored his heart’s panicked thumping, and ran down the street.

The boy didn’t stop running until he’d lost himself in the maze of the city, and he breathed heavily and knelt down, holding the coat tightly to his chest – his victory prize. He huddled into a ball, wrapping the coat around himself once more, and fell asleep in an unfamiliar gutter, dreaming his usual nightmares of wild seas and sharp cliffs. But this time, a figure stood in the distance, crouched on a rock far out in the sea, her hair whipping around her, her intense eyes flashing with lighting as thunder crashed all around them.