The Birth of a new moon

her jacket up over it against the cold.

A bell tinkled overhead when she entered the Change gallery, and the pretty young woman at the desk raised her head to give her the standard greeting, grateful and hopeful, of a shopkeeper on a slow day. Ana started to respond in the browser's usual way, a quick phrase and a duck of the head, when her eyes caught on the other person in the shop; the words in her mouth turned to dust, and shock froze her spine.

Next to the woman sat Abby, hunched up on a stool, weaving a yarn rope from a wooden spool with four small nails in it, one side of her mouth pursed up in concentration, her hair its usual wild mass of intractable black curls. Abby looked up from her work to the young woman at her side, and then glanced at Ana, and the rigid shock melted into a shudder of mixed relief and despair, because of course it was not Abby. Abby was dead. This was another child, a pleasant enough child, no doubt, who resembled Anne's daughter strongly in her hair and her eyes and the quirk of her lips, a child who was looking wary now at a powerful current of something she did not understand.

Ana tore her eyes from Abby's double and glanced at the woman, who she assumed was the child's mother and whose face was now looking positively apprehensive.

First meetings are dangerous moments. Ana pulled off her hat with one hand, ran the other over the brief bristle that covered her skull, and gave a shaky laugh.

'How weird,' she said to the woman. 'For a second there I could have sworn the child was someone I knew a long time ago. She's the spitting image of my sister's kid at that age. How old is she? Five? Six?'

'Almost six,' the shopkeeper said, still cautious.

Ana shook her head and took a few steps forward, careful to stay closer to the mother than to the child. 'My goodness,' she said to the little girl. 'That's quite a rope you've made.'

It was, too. It looped around and around on the child's jean-covered lap and trailed off onto the floor, yards and yards of tubular weaving, uneven and full of gaps but gloriously bright, almost fluorescent in intense shades of alternating orange, fuchsia, lime green, and yellow. It was obviously a work of great dedication. 'May I ask what you're going to do with all that?'

The child looked down at the spool in her hands, and after a moment of silence, the woman spoke up. 'She's thinking of making a rug with it, to put on the floor next to her bed,'

Ana studied the immense pile of soft yarn rope, and raised her eyebrow in puzzlement at the mother, who let go of the last traces of apprehension at being in an empty shop with a stranger who had reacted oddly to the sight of her daughter. She said, 'Like a braided rug, you know? Show the lady how it's done, Dulcie.'

Obediently, the child laid down her spool and crochet hook and slid down from the stool to dig around in the bright mass until she came up with the end, two feet of an almost neon orange dimmed only slightly by collected grime. This she laid on the counter, holding it in place with two fingers, and began deliberately to coil the rope around the center.

'Ah,' said Ana. 'I see. In fact, I have one like that on the floor of my bus. Only this one is brighter than most of the ones I've seen.'

'A lot brighter,' agreed the woman.

'It's going to be magnificent,' Ana told the little girl.

This pronouncement brought the child's head up, so that for the first time she was looking straight at Ana. After a moment, she smiled, a shy and brilliant smile that acknowledged Ana as a true and kindred spirit, and Ana felt as if she'd been kicked in the stomach, because it was Abby, sharing a moment of complicity against Aaron and the world. In another moment she would be crying for the first time in years.

Abruptly, Ana moved away, reaching blindly for the first thing she came across, which turned out to be a crudely thrown pottery mug with a quail drawn into the side. The bird was nicely done, simple, brief lines bobbing with the essence of quailness, even if the glaze had slipped into it, and the shape of the cup was inviting in the hand. She held it for a moment, finding it oddly soothing, then took it over to the counter.

'I broke my favorite mug last week,' she told the woman. 'Funny how certain shapes seem just right, isn't it? And the bird is great.'

'Isn't it? In fact—is this one of Jason's, Dulcie?' she asked the child. Dulcie looked up from her work, nodded, and dropped her head again. 'I thought so. Jason is Dulcie's brother,' she told Ana. 'Not much of a potter, I'm afraid, but he can draw beautifully.'

Ana asked hesitantly, 'Is Jason your son?'

The shopkeeper gaped at her for a moment, and then laughed loudly, a noise more uncomfortable than amused, and shook her head in rejection of the idea. 'Oh, no, no. And Dulcie's not my daughter. She's just a good friend who's helping out in the store for a day or two. Aren't you, honey?' she said to the girl, and reached out to give her an awkward hug, which Dulcie allowed but did not respond to.

Ana seized the small opening and introduced herself. 'I'm Ana Wakefield,' she told the woman. 'I just got into town, and I'll probably be staying for a while. You have a great shop.'

'Carla Mclntyre,' said the woman in return, and picked up the mug to check on the price. 'And the shop's not mine, it's a communal effort.' It sounded like someone else's phrase, but she chose not to continue with the quote. Instead, she wrote up a sales slip and gave it to Ana, saying, 'That's ten fifty.'

It was more than the mug was worth, but Ana meekly handed her the money and waited for her to wrap it and put it into a bag. She thanked Carla, said good-bye to her and to the child, and went back out onto the street, the bell tinkling behind her.

Thirty-five minutes later, right on time, the shop closed. On the doorstep Carla, bent over the lock, felt Dulcie tug at her sleeve. She pushed away the brief irritation she felt at the child's interference with the always difficult task of locking up, which involved inserting the key and then easing it out the tiniest fraction of an inch before jiggling it and hoping it would turn.

'What is it, honey?' she asked absently. She really was going to have to insist that someone fix the lock. One of these days it wasn't going to work at all.

Her only answer was another tug. Hopeless to try locking the door with the child hanging on her arm. She summoned the patience of the truly wise and reminded herself that a child would lead them.

Probably not this child, but one never knew.

She straightened up and looked to see what had caught Dulcie's interest, and found herself staring down the road at a human backside emerging from the remains of an exploded engine.

That was an instant's impression, but on closer examination Carla decided that the assorted parts and tools lined up along the edge of the sidewalk were too orderly for an explosion, and besides, she hadn't heard anything. Someone was just working on his car.

'Yes, I see, Dulcie,' she said, and turned again to the lock. 'The man has just chosen a strange place to fix his engine,'

Ah, success, and the satisfying click of the bolt sliding across. Carla was so pleased at this minor victory, it was a moment before she registered the fact that the child Dulcie had spoken.

'What did you say, honey?' Carla's voice slid upward in astonishment and excitement: Dulcie could talk, and occasionally had in the weeks she had lived at Change, but she had been silent all that day.

Now, however, she even repeated herself.

'I said, It's the lady.'

Carla had been instructed not to fuss if Dulcie decided to verbalize. However, It wasn't easy to be natural, thinking how pleased Steven would be when he heard.

'Lady?' she said. 'What lady?'

Dulcie apparently thought that Carla could figure that one out by herself, because she did not answer, merely put the hand that was not busy carrying the canvas bag with the future rug in it into her pocket, and studied the blue-jeaned buttocks of the person emerging from the Volkswagen bus.

Ana dropped back to her knee again, holding a length of frayed tubing in the greasy fingertips of a hand clothed in fingerless wool gloves. She reached behind her for the toolbox, rummaged through it a bit, and then seemed to notice her audience.

'Hi,' she said cheerfully. Her frozen hands found a roll of duct tape in the box. 'Hello, Dulcie. Going home now?' She began to pick at the end of the tape with a thumbnail, with limited success. Both hands and tape were too cold.