The Woman Who Married the Man in the Moon

Schmendrick stared at her without replying. She looked away, looked back at him, stood on one foot, scuffling the other in the soft earth, and finally asked, “I know you had all those things in your sleeve — I know that — but…but is there anything in my hair? Like with Findros?”

The magician went on regarding her for a long moment before putting his hand lightly on her head. “Mmm… well, definitely no eggs of any sort…no money, more’s the pity…no pretty shells…hello, hello — now what on earth have we here?”

Mourra found herself holding her breath. Something smooth and cool moved in her hair — don’t let it be a snake, I’ll scream if it’s a snake — and the magician grunted with effort, as though he were hauling an anchor up from the depths of the sea. Then the coolness was fresh dew on her cheek, the smoothness a velvet petal. The magician was holding up a single flower as pale scarlet as the approaching sunset, as golden as a bee. There was nothing else in his hand.

Mourra took the flower from him slowly, without speaking. Sairey was nearing them, her expression a mixture of anger and immense relief, her right arm occupied by a clinging Findros, the left reaching out for her daughter. Mourra put the flower into her hand, saying, “I found this for you. It’s a magic flower.” She closed her eyes then and leaned into her mother.

Sairey was a small, dark, sturdily-made woman, with a quick eye and a disturbingly level glance. She considered the magician briefly, bent her head in acknowledgment, but immediately turned to Mourra and Findros, demanding, “Why are you so late? Where have you been?”

“She got us losted, I told you,” Findros mumbled against her shoulder. “The Gician saved us. His name’s Schmoondrake.”

Mourra was too tired to contradict him. She said only, “I’m sorry. I thought I knew the way home from the picnic.”

Sairey swept her into her free arm before Mourra had finished speaking. “I kept looking for you under the willow.” The magician could hear that her voice was shaking. She waved her hand toward the huge old tree in front of their cottage. “I kept thinking that you might be having a tea party under there, and forgot it was getting dark. The way you do sometimes.”

A child on either hip, she looked up at the magician, smiling slightly. “I thank you for bringing my pair of disasters home to me. Though perhaps you’ll be thanking me now for taking them off your hands.”

Schmendrick bowed more formally than she had done. “A man with a cart’s more to be thanked than I, who only led them more astray than they already were, being lost myself. As I am still.”

“I don’t understand,” she said slowly; and then, “But where are my manners? Will you not come in and sit to dinner with us? It’s the least I can offer you, surely.” She eyed him more critically than she had at first meeting, and could not forbear adding, “And a good meal or two would do you no harm, I’ll say that much.”

The magician hesitated — seemed about to decline the offer — then abruptly smiled and nodded. “My thanks. I do sometimes forget that I am hungry.”

“I, never,” she said; then, quickly, laughing, “As you see, they never let me,” for Mourra and Findros were already tugging her toward the little house. “And getting food ready for them always makes me want to eat something myself, and will end by making me as big as a barn, I know this.” She shooed the children ahead of her, telling them briskly, “There’s lentil soup, and if you don’t wash your hands and your faces, nobody gets any.” They whooped and ran off, and she led the magician into the house, calling after them, “And, Findros, the turtle egg is not coming to dinner.”

There was a vegetable stew as well as the soup, and cold, sweet well water. Dinner was — according to Sairey — a quieter affair than usual, the children both being too weary to squabble. Findros actually fell asleep at the table, but Mourra lingered, fishing sleepily but stubbornly for reasons not to go up to bed. She still avoided sitting close to the magician, nor did she meet his glance often. But the flower that he had taken from her hair reposed precariously in a lopsided clay drinking mug next to her own, and now and then she brushed it against her closed eyes, as though to feel its colors through the lids.

A dog howled, somewhere nearby, and Sairey half-rose from her chair, apologizing as she sat back. “I don’t know why that one always startles me. There’s no harm in him — he’s only an old sheepdog baying at the moon.”

“He sleeps all day,” Mourra muttered scornfully. “The sheep make fun of him.”

Schmendrick asked, “Do you know why dogs do that?” Both mother and daughter stared at him. “Because the moon used to be part of the Earth, and that is the part that all the dogs come from. But the moon wanted to be free, and it struggled and struggled until one night it broke loose from the Earth and sailed right off into the sky, the way it is now. Only all the dogs had their families there, all their mothers and fathers, and their children, their houses and all their buried bones, and their books —”

Mourra giggled. “Not books. Dogs don’t read books —”

“Of course not, because they’re all gone up in the sky, you see. And every night the moon comes out and all the dogs in the world see it, and they cry for their families. That is why they always sound so terribly sad.”

Sairey refilled his cup from the sweating pitcher of well water. She said, “I don’t believe I ever heard that story.”

“It is well-known where I come from.” The magician’s expression was entirely serious.

“And that would be…where?” He was savoring the cold water, and did not appear to have heard her. Sairey said, “Daughter. You are about to fall asleep in your stew. Go to bed.”

Mourra did not protest. Drowsily finding her way to her feet, she asked, “Can I take my flower with me? Just tonight?”

“I thought it was my flower,” her mother teased her. “Very well, I will lend it to you for the night.” She rose herself to give the girl a quick, warm hug; then prodded her gently toward the stair. “But you must not be upset when it dies, in a day or two. Flowers die.”

Trudging up to the loft she shared with her brother, Mourra heard Schmendrick’s reply, “Perhaps not this one.” She looked over her shoulder to observe Sairey’s wordless surprise, and to hear the magician continue, “It did not come from the earth, after all, but from her hair — from her head. The flowers in our heads…those survive.”

Her mother did not respond, not until Mourra had put on her nightdress and crawled under her blanket with the blue and green birds on it that Sairey had woven especially for her. She brought her flower with her, pressing the fragrant stem against her cheek. Then, distant but clear, Sairey’s quiet, even voice, “Who are you?”

Mourra fell asleep before she heard the magician’s answer, but the full moon rose into her open window, and she woke to see it burning itself free of the willow branches that she could almost have touched. Like a firefly in a spiderweb, she thought, remembering the story of the woman whose clothes were made for her by spiders. She sat up and leaned her elbows on the windowsill to see her mother and Schmendrick standing near the old tree. The earliest stars were waking in the deep sky, one by one, and the magician was telling a story.

“No, they used to stick straight up, just as though the tree were reaching for the sky. That is a fact — any willow will tell you that. Listen now. The rain god’s daughter fell in love with a mortal, a human, and they ran away together, for fear of his anger. He could never catch them, because they fled so fast, but they could never rest, either, for he would always find them, no matter where in the world they hid themselves. Because all the trees of the world were afraid of the rain god, and none would give them shelter. Only the willow.”

Sairey laughed softly. “Yes, of course. It would be the willow.”

“The willow felt sorry for them and said it would take them in, which obviously wasn’t much help, not with its branches as wide-apart as they were. So the willow tried and tried — slowly, painfully, so painfully, all night long —”

Like that time I got my finger bent back, playing ball with Findros…

“— but at last it managed to get all its branches turned down, all the way to the ground, touching the ground, and so they hid the rain god’s daughter and her husband, and the rain god never could find them. So then they were safe.”

“The rain god must have been very angry. Gods don’t take that sort of thing well. As I know.”

“Oh, naturally he was furious! So he commanded the willow to stay like that forever, with its branches