Page 11 of Moon Chosen

What would he expect from his God? Truth—righteous anger—compassion. And through his reflection in the stag’s eye, he found the answer.

I am a Harvester, not a Reaper. I must deny myself the final stroke. I must free my messenger to complete the fate I have set him to by sharing my life and my wounds with him.

Dead Eye brought the dagger down in two motions, cutting the noose around the stag’s neck and around his legs. Then he stepped back, watching the creature struggle to its feet. Eyes flashing white, skin raining a trail of scarlet tears, the creature staggered away.

Dead Eye watched it go and his gaze was drawn to the distance where the sugar pines grew to mammoth heights, great sentinels that stood guard over the mystery and magick that waited beyond the dead City with the Others.

Dead Eye smiled.

4

It was an uphill climb to Mari’s burrow, but she was used to the effort it took to reach the safety of their home. As she came to the first of the nettle thicket Mari shed some of the constant watchfulness she, or anyone who wasn’t looking for their death, had to maintain in the forest at night. Instead of avoiding the knife-tipped bushes, Mari entered their domain boldly, stepping easily around the thickening clumps of stinging plants. She only paused when she came to what appeared to be a wall of thorns. She bent and picked up one of two well-worn walking sticks hidden beneath the branches, using it to hold aside thick arms of the sticky nettles, only to release them to fall back into their protective wall after she’d passed.

It was slower going here, though still uphill. The hidden pathways through the nettle grove were labyrinthine, but Mari knew their secrets. The grove had been planned, planted, and nurtured by generations of Moon Women to conceal their burrow.

Earth Walkers all lived in burrows they created from the living earth, usually choosing difficult, hidden places for their homes. Women tended to group their burrows together. Men, even those who were mated, lived apart from the Clanswomen, as Night Fever made cohabitation as dangerous as it was difficult. But the Clan didn’t hide from one another. The women simply controlled day-to-day life—raising children, growing crops, weaving and counseling and lawmaking. Men hunted and served as protectors.

In the matriarchal Clan world, the ultimate leader for each Clan was their Moon Woman. She not only held the power to Wash the Clan of Night Fever, she was their Healer—legend even said a Clan’s Moon Woman held the true Spirit of the Clan within her protection, and as long as she thrived, the Clan thrived.

As Mari made her way through the maze of nettles she felt as if the grove embraced her, hiding her and protecting her much as did her mother. Gently, she lifted aside the last thick nettle branch and stepped within a moss-carpeted entryway behind which was the high arch that framed the thick wooden door to their burrow. Carved into the arch was the lovely figure of the Earth Mother. Her sides were worn smooth and shiny from the reverent touch of the generations of Moon Women who had lived safely, securely, and happily within the cave.

“And that’s why it is forbidden for all except a Moon Woman and her daughters to know the location of her burrow,” Mari spoke to the silent carving. “The Spirit of the Clan must be hidden and safe if the Clan is to continue to thrive.” She approached the door and, mimicking her mama’s movements, touched her fingers to her lips and then pressed them to the side of the Earth Mother. “Please watch over Mama and bring her safely home,” she murmured.

The inside of the burrow welcomed her with familiar sights and scents and she shrugged off her cloak and went straight to the washing bucket. Mari dipped her hands in the cool water and splashed it over her face and arms, scrubbing off the hardened clay and the concealing dirt, sloughing off the uncomfortable disguise she was forced to wear daily. She dried her face and arms, ignoring the matted feel of her hair, and muttered to herself. “I wish…” she began as she went to her desk and sat. She picked up the unfinished sketch of Leda, speaking the words to it that she would never allow herself to be so unfeeling to speak to her mama in person.

“Mama, I wish you’d never met him. I wish you had loved one of the Clansmen. I wish I could be like everyone else. Then I could truly stand beside you without it causing us to be banished, or worse.”

Mari mentally shook herself. “This isn’t helping. It’s only making me sad. I need to snap out of it before Mama gets home. She’ll already be worried about me and exhausted from Washing the Clan. She’s always worried about me—and the Clan always exhausts her.” Mari paused and then whispered the thought that was never far from her mind every Third Night when her mama was gone. “I hate them. I hate the Scratchers. They use her and use her. Someday they’re going to use her up.”

Sweet girl, don’t hate your Clan. You hold my heart, but I hold the Spirit of the Clan. It is my fondest wish that someday you will hold their Spirit, too.

Her mother’s admonishment drifted through Mari’s imagination, and she forced her thoughts to lighten, and focus on the one thing that always brought her joy—her sketching. She studied the drawing of her mother, really seeing it with her sharp, artist’s eyes. Yes, the hands were out of perspective, but that was really an easy fix. What she had done perfectly was to capture her mother’s face. Though Leda was Moon Woman, and the soul of the Clan, she was as plain in appearance as were most of her people. Leda was thick-browed, wide-nosed, and narrow-lipped. But in Mari’s sketch, her mother’s thin lips were lifted in a brilliant smile that was reflected in the one feature of hers that was truly remarkable, her wide, silver-gray eyes.

“Now that, I got perfect.”

Automatically, Mari turned to the hand-sized oval of precious glass that sat in its place beside the pots of ink, quills, and charcoal pencils on her desk. She lifted it and gazed into its magickal surface.

The newly scrubbed girl that looked back did not have her mother’s face, though she did have her wide, silver-gray eyes. Mari touched her hair, feeling the familiar stiffness of it that was caused by the thick dye her mother applied to it weekly, keeping the color of it dark and muddy, like brackish water. “Like the rest of the Scratchers,” Mari said with resignation. She shook her head and spoke to her reflection. “No. You shouldn’t complain. It keeps you alive. It keeps them from knowing the truth about you.”

The motion of her head made her hair move, and even in the dim light of the glows her excellent night vision, inherited from her mother, caught a flash of daylight within the mirror. Staring in the reflective surface, Mari pulled a long, errant curl from under the matted mess. She wrapped it around her finger, reveling in the softness of it. “It is the color of sunlight. I’d almost forgotten.”

Mari studied her reflection more closely. Yes, she’d been right to look carefully. Her brows shimmered in the light of the cave, their true blond color peeking through the dark dye.

“Mama was right as usual. Time to dye it again,” she mumbled.

Not that it mattered all that much. When she went out tomorrow,ifshe went out tomorrow,ifthe sun was covered well enough by clouds, Mari would be sure she camouflaged the true blond of her brows and her face with the muddy paste she and her mother had spent eighteen winters perfecting—thickening her features and transforming her into that which she was not—a full-blood Earth Walker.

Mari traced the line of her clean brow, delicate where her mother’s was thick, down her face to her high, well-formed cheekbones, then over her small, straight nose.

“I see you, Father,” she whispered to the mirror. “It’s the only way I will ever see you, but I do. I see you in me, and I know the story. Mama will never forget. I will never forget. How could I? Every day my differences remind me of you.”

Mari put the mirror down and began to sort through the pile of what her mother believed were unfinished sketches—sketches Mari knew Leda would not look at without her permission. Near the bottom of the pile she found it, and pulled the long, slim sheet out.

The sketch was done in black ink, made from boiling walnuts. She’d used only the sharpest of her quills to produce the intricate lines needed to bring the scene alive. It showed a tall man whose facial features, except for his eyes, mimicked Mari’s. He was standing beside a waterfall smiling at a plain young woman who gazed at him adoringly through her mother’s eyes while she held an infant, swaddled in the soft, thick fronds of a Mother Plant. And beside the man was the rough outline of a large, ever-watchful canine.

“You met by accident,” Mari said softly, tracing her finger over the sketch of her father. “She shouldn’t have allowed you to see her, but she did. She shouldn’t have loved you, but she did. She said that she knew your heart the first moment she looked into your face because she saw such kindness there.” Mari paused, her finger moving from the sketch to her own face again. “She says she sees you in my face, too. But we have to hide—we have to hide what was between you because Companions and Earth Walkers cannot join, cannot love.” She smoothed the paper carefully with her hand, as if she would touch the father she could never meet. Then she chose her favorite quill, dipped it in the ink, and began to sketch over her father’s skin the delicate patterns that would glow from just beneath his flesh as he absorbed the sunlight that gave Companions the ability to turn that which once had destroyed the world to that which had created a new world order.

The same delicate patterns that glowed from beneath Mari’s flesh, but would never, ever glow from beneath Leda’s skin, or the skin of any true Earth Walker.