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(A/N: Any text you may recognize comes from various plays by a famous playwright. Props if you can identify them!)
By the Inconstant Moon
Anne Walsh
Thomas li Nantul stretched luxuriously in his big red chair, breathing deeply of the grass-scented air blowing through his open window. Finally, the country. Where I can set down my load for a little while, stop being the perfect highbred son, and be alone with my own true love…
He leaned down, lifted the huge book onto his lap, and opened it at his bookmark, running his finger down the columns of tiny type until he found the beginning.
Boatswain!
Here, master. What cheer?
Good, speak to th’ mariners; fall to’t yarely, or we run ourselves aground…
The ship pitched on the storm-born waves; people on deck fell shouting into the sea. Thomas read on. Soon he was traveling through an island full of wonders, monsters and airy spirits, and meeting a castaway Prince who mourned his father and a Duke who could do magic.
If I could be anyone, I’d be Ferdinand or Prospero. Prospero for obvious reasons—who wouldn’t want to be able to do magic—and Ferdinand because he had a father who loved him...
His mind skipped to his father, Lord Samuel li Lutyn, now out riding somewhere on their country estate. No, that’s not fair to Father. He does love me, or he tries to. He just doesn’t understand me. Neither does Mother.
Lord Samuel adored hunting, riding, and all other physical sports, and was seriously considering volunteering in the war against the Guvabor, the coalition of humans and strange creatures who seemed determined to remain on their stolen land near the borders of Dulia. His wife, Lady Anna le Nantul, was happiest when dressing for, attending, or discussing a party of some sort.
I confuse them. They can’t understand why I like the library best of all the rooms in the house, and why I’m always at the theater, especially when there’s a classical play presented. Lord Samuel and Lady Anna had no taste for “musty old retellings of mustier old tales” (his father’s opinion) or “those endless words, words, words” (his mother’s, occasionally amusing to him, as she’d accidentally quoted one of the works she so disparaged).
I’m smart enough now to hide it from them. In public, I’m the perfect son. So polite, so obedient, such good grades and honors everywhere. He sighed. It’s hard to hold it all up sometimes, but I can always run away and hide here when I need to. A hand caressed the pages of the volume on his lap.
Books make the best friends. They never change or lie to you. They’ll always be the same as they are today.
He returned to his reading. Ferdinand had just met the Duke’s daughter Miranda, and was now calling her “Admir’d Miranda, indeed the top of admiration, worth what’s dearest to the world!”
What would it be like to feel that for a girl? To be willing to work like Ferdinand, like a slave, and not mind it because the girl you love is talking to you?
Will I ever know?
A maidservant stuck her head around the open door. “Please, sir, his lordship has returned, and he wants you in the courtyard. He says he has something for you. He says to hurry.”
Something for me? Thomas was already halfway out the door. His seventeen years had not overcome a child’s love of presents.
He ran into the courtyard and stopped dead.
That’s not a something… that’s a someone!
His father shoved the girl towards him. “Take her, boy, go on.”
She stumbled forward, then stopped of her own accord, a few feet away from him. He stared at her. She stared back.
He knew she was seeing a very ordinary boy, brown hair, brown eyes, skin a bit tan after the summer. He saw a girl with dark skin, dark braided hair, and wide and frightened gray eyes. Almost without thinking, he spoke.
“I won’t hurt you.”
She looked surprised at first. Then, tentatively, she smiled.
“I’m Thomas. What’s your name?”
“She doesn’t talk, boy. I found her asleep beside a mazo.” Lord Samuel shook his head. “Missed the brute, though. Shame.”
Thomas’ eyes widened. The human-sized flying reptiles known as mazor were part of the Guvabor. Some people called them dragons and said they breathed fire and ate humans. Thomas doubted it—the small winged lizards called dactyls, which looked just like shrunken mazor, were herbivorous—but still, if this girl had been sleeping next to one...
Thomas put the sentence together carefully. “Ix u nir Toguvabi?”
“What?” his father asked impatiently.
The girl’s face broke into a true smile, and she inclined her head.
“She’s one of the Guvabor, Father,” Thomas said respectfully. “That’s what I asked.”
Lord Samuel snorted. “I could have told you that. I’ll have to contact the Army about this—a live prisoner is hardly small news—but until they decide what to do with her, she’s your charge.”
“Me?” Thomas’s voice squeaked in surprise. He coughed. “What am I supposed to do with her, sir?”
“Take care of her, boy. Keep control of her, and don’t let her go running off.” His father turned to go inside.
“Sir—how?”
“Any way you need to, Thomas my lad. Any way at all.” Lord Samuel sniggered once, then turned on his heel and strode away with his best military gait.
The girl scowled and flicked a rude hand gesture at his father’s back. Thomas grinned at her and copied it. She stared at him, then grinned back.
“My room is this way. Will you come?”
She nodded.
“I was just reading a play. Would you like to hear some?”
She nodded eagerly, so he read the last act and the Epilogue aloud, hamming it up a bit for her sake. She seemed to understand the point of it, since when he was finished, she applauded him, quietly.
“You like it?”
She nodded, then got up from the chair and went over to his desk. Thomas absently watched her dig through his mess. Most of his mind was basking in the compliments of her rapt attention, her sweet smile, her applause. No one ever clapped for me before. No one ever even listened.
The girl found pen and paper. She scribbled two sentences and handed the pad to him.
‘You read very well. My name is Kathryn.’
“I’m glad you liked it.” Then the greater implications hit him. “You can write!”
Dark eyebrows climbed a forehead only one shade lighter, and dark hands took pen and pad back. ‘I’m seventeen years old. Why would I not?’
“I thought...” Thomas looked from the words to the girl. “You are Toguvabi, aren’t you?”
Kathryn smiled broadly, her teeth and the humor in the expression combining to make it brighter than the ones Thomas was used to seeing. ‘You mustn’t believe everything you read,’ she scratched beneath her earlier sentences. ‘I’d bet I know more languages than you do.’
“You probably do,” Thomas admitted. “I know Anyis, obviously, but you know Linmyra, don’t you? The Old Language, what I spoke to you earlier?”
She nodded. ‘I have lyrror friends,’ she wrote, naming the other non-human species of the Guvabor. ‘We run together, then play word games and make stories from them. They never admit I win, even when I do. Cats are like that.’ Her hand caressed empty air as though she stroked the back of a human-sized cat seated beside her.
Thomas’ brain was reeling a bit under successive shocks. Fortunately, the dinner bell rang at that moment.
Kathryn scribbled again. ‘Don’t tell anyone I can write. Please. You can call me Kate and say you named me after the Shrew.’
Thomas laughed, surprised. “You don’t act like a shrew.”
‘I can if you want me to.’ Kathryn wiggled her eyebrows at him, and Thomas had to laugh again.
“What in the world were you thinking, Samuel, she probably eats with her fingers, and I will not have my good linen dirtied by such as she, and when was the last time she had a bath, she’s probably filthy, and if she has fleas she does not spend one night in this house…”
“Mother!” Thomas was startled by the sound of his own voice. I’ve never shouted at Mother before. But it worked. And besides, Kathryn’s worth it.
“Kate does not have fleas,” he continued in a more normal tone. “And she is not dirty. And if she eats with her fingers, why does it matter?”
Lady Anna sputtered.
Lord Samuel looked curiously at the girl, sitting quietly beside Thomas. “Kate? Is that what you’re calling her?”
“I tried out names until she told me to stop. She says Kate’s not quite it, but it’s close enough.”
“All right, then.” Lord Samuel signaled the servants to bring in the soup. “And Anna, if she stains the linen, I’ll get you new linen.”
“Oh, Samuel darling, would you?”
Kathryn did not eat with her fingers. In fact, she used the proper spoon for the soup, the correct fork for the salad, and wiped her lips with her napkin before taking a drink. She refused wine, but took a second slice of pie after glancing at Thomas, who nodded slightly.
I think she’s just impressed Father, at least. Mother may be a lost cause.
“May we be excused, please, Father?” he asked when Kathryn put down her fork. “I want to show Kate some more of the house.”
“Certainly, my boy. On your way.”
Before leaving the dining room, Thomas bowed to his parents, and Kate managed a creditable curtsy.
‘Manners,’ she sketched in the air as they ran towards Thomas’ room. ‘Mazor.’ She pantomimed a cranky dragon-like figure, and Thomas laughed yet again.
I think I’ve laughed more since she got here than I have for the last year...
They always ate a formal dinner with Lord Samuel and Lady Anna. In a month, Lady Anna’s servants were coming to collect Kathryn before dinner, to get her ready. Thomas almost didn’t recognize her the first time he saw her dressed up, and from the amused look on her face, she hadn’t recognized herself in the mirror.
But she never spoke.
Instead, she wrote until her hand cramped, telling Thomas the true story of the Guvabor, the Three Peoples. ‘Humans were meant to be allied with mazor and lyrror,’ she wrote over and over. ‘We balance them out, keep them from fighting forever. Before there were humans here, both races were dying out. Now they’re strong again. We can be strong too, if we join them.’
Thomas wasn’t sure how much of Kate’s tales to believe—there couldn’t really be magic that would let you travel kims in an instant, or heal wounds with a touch, could there? And even if a mazo or a lyrro took human form, what sane human would want to marry one? Still, the stories confirmed what he had always suspected; the Guvabor wanted only to be left alone.
But she could be lying to me. Lying like she lied to the Army people. Two high-ranked officers had come out to the estate within two days of Kathryn’s capture to question her closely, but she’d covered her mouth in distress and shaken her head at paper and pencil. Eventually, they’d bowed to the inevitable and left her where she was, encouraging Thomas to learn what he could from her.
‘I don’t really know much about the war,’ she’d told him that night. ‘And why would I betray my people if I did? You wouldn’t, would you?’
“I hope not.”
A satisfied nod. ‘Neither would I.’
She hadn’t really lied, though, Thomas told himself. She just hadn’t spoken up. And what reason would she have to lie to him?
I’m not important. I’m not rich or powerful, and I don’t have any say in the war. We’re just friends, and she knows I like to hear her stories. He smiled. Or read them, I suppose.
The first snow was falling one night when he found her standing at a window, staring out sadly. “What’s wrong?” he asked.
Kathryn pulled her small pad of paper and pen from her pocket to scribble an answer. ‘Tonight is Dark Moon, and the snow means I can’t go out to dance.’
“You dance outside at night?”
‘Yes. We dance at Dark Moon and Light Moon at home, and I dance here to be close to my friends. I’ve danced every Dark Moon and Light Moon since I came.’
“You never told me.” The word “home” in Kathryn’s scribble had caught Thomas. He was used to thinking of his home as Kathryn’s.
‘You never woke up.’
“Do you have to do these dances?”
Kate shrugged. ‘Nothing terrible will happen if I don’t. But I like to dance. The dances hold special meaning.’
“I have an idea. Come on.”
He led Kathryn down three flights of stairs, closed a door, and flicked a light switch.
She made a sound of wonder. They were standing in a vast, wood-floored ballroom.
“My parents hardly ever use it. I don’t think they’ll mind if we do.” He looked at her hesitantly. “Would you mind showing me? How to do the dances?”
‘I don’t mind, but some of them are complicated. Are you sure you want to learn?’
“Yes.”
Kathryn had not exaggerated, but Thomas was quick to learn. At the end of an hour, he had learned the basic steps for three Moontime dances.
‘The first two are for Dark Moon, which is tonight,’ Kathryn wrote as they rested. ‘The third is for Light Moon.’
“You said they had special meanings?”
‘Yes. We dance at Dark Moon for sorrow, for remembering those who have died or gone to other places. My friends and family dance for me, just like I do for them.’ She smiled, her eyes far away. ‘The lyrror say that as long as we dance in their names, the ones we love never really leave us.’
“That’s beautiful.”
‘Light Moon dances are for joy. People who do great things, new mothers and fathers, newlyweds and people in love, all dance at Light Moon.’ Kathryn paused, then scribbled something else, smirking. ‘A boy once tried to pull me into a Light Moon dance. I slapped his face.’
“Good for you.” Thomas hoped he’d hidden his true reaction under his joviality—did Kate know she’d just told him, in a roundabout way, that she was available?
He intercepted an amused grey glance from her, and smiled back. Of course she does. She always knows.
That night, while the household slept, Thomas and Kathryn danced under the Dark Moon, Thomas for the grandparents he could just remember and the little brother born dead, Kathryn for her friends who were far away.
For those moments while his feet traced the patterns of the dance, Thomas could forget the burden of being the only son of a well-bred family.
He wished it would never end.
“So what do you want to do?”
Kathryn picked up Thomas’s volume of plays, flipped through it until she found a certain page, then handed it to him.
“Read this one?”
She nodded, settling into the chair in the corner, legs over one of its arms.
“All right, here goes.” He adopted his booming Chorus voice. “Two households, both alike in dignity …”
Thomas put on funny voices for the comic servants, an agreeable tenor for the man of reason, a strong baritone for the young hothead, and a profound bass for the Prince. Another tenor served for the young inamorato, and he falsettoed his way through the inamorata’s first scene with her mother and her nurse, making Kathryn giggle. After navigating a huge speech by the rollicking friend about dreams, he reached the scene at the masquerade ball, where the lovers first meet.
Moved by a sudden urge, Thomas got up and crossed the room to kneel in front of the chair. Kathryn sat up, startled, and he seized the opportunity to take her hand in his.
“If I profane with my unworthiest hand
This holy shrine, the gentle sin is this;
My lips, two blushing pilgrims, ready stand
To smooth that rough touch with a tender kiss.”
Thomas bowed his head, preparing to force his voice upwards for the answering quatrain, when a quiet voice broke in.
“Good pilgrim, you do wrong your hand too much,
Which mannerly devotion shows in this…”
Kate slipped to her knees beside him and lifted his chin with her free hand.
“For saints have hands that pilgrims’ hands do touch,
And palm to palm is holy palmers’ kiss.”
She turned his hand upwards and laid her palm over it, smiling at him.
Hurriedly, Thomas collected his wits and picked up the cue. “Have not saints lips, and holy pilgrims too?”
“Ay, pilgrim, lips that they must use in prayer.”
I wonder how much of this she plans on doing? “O, then, dear saint, let lips do what hands do! They pray; grant thou, lest faith turn to despair.”
She shook her head, not quite mockingly. “Saints do not move, though grant for prayers’ sake.”
“Then move not while my prayer’s effect I take.” Thomas swallowed hard, hoped this was what Kathryn wanted, and leaned forward and kissed her.
She moved into it, not away. When they finally broke it off, it took willpower to remember he still had another line to say. “Thus from my lips, by thine, my sin is purged.”
She ran a finger across her mouth. “Then have my lips the sin that they have took.”
“Sin from my lips? O trespass sweetly urged! Give me my sin again.” This time, he only pulled away when air became necessary.
“You kiss by th’ book.” Kate was panting a bit herself. “Do that again.”
Thomas obliged readily.
When they came up the third time, he found himself in possession of an armful of girl, and severely confused. “I thought you couldn’t talk.”
Kate leaned back against his arms, smiling easily. “Surprise.”
“No joke.” Thomas shifted around to sitting on one hip. “Why?”
“So no one would ask me questions I couldn’t answer.” Kathryn’s smile faded, and she pulled away from the embrace, sitting up. “Thomas, there is a reason I broke silence. I have to leave tonight. I have to go home.”
“What?” No, please, no. Don’t leave me now.
“I got a message today. The winter is bad here, but it’s worse at home, and that’s handicapping our defense. Your people can strike in even the worst weather with your technology, but mine...” She trailed off. “Why does it have to be that way? Yours and mine? Honestly, we’re worse than them.” The book of plays quivered under her fiercely pointing finger. “But it’s true. My people need me to come home.”
“Why you?”
“I have fire magic. It’s not much, but for some reason it’s not a common gift right now, and I work well with other people’s power…” She saw his expression. “Didn’t you know?”
“No.” How was I supposed to know that?
“I’m sorry. I should have told you before.” Kathryn smiled a little ruefully. “Especially since I was using being here as an excuse not to keep up with my work.”
“If you have magic, why did you stay?” Why would anyone stay around here if they didn’t have to?
“You have to ask?” Kate cupped his cheek in one soft hand. “It was you. It was always you.”
Me? “I rank above magic?”
Kate shrugged. “Magic’s not so much. It’s a lot of studying, for one thing. That was part of the reason I was out with Teret that day when your father found me—I’d wanted to borrow a book of his about magic.”
“What was the other part?”
“He’s my friend. And we both like basking in the sun and eating tomatoes and reading books. Especially the classics, like you and I read together. He says they give him new ideas for spell-dances.”
This might be interesting at any other time, but not now. “Kate, do they need you that much?”
“People’s lives are at stake.”
Thomas took a deep breath. “What do you need me to do?”
A tear tracked down Kathryn’s face as she took Thomas’ hand. “Come with me. Please.”
Thomas shook his head, blinking hard against tears of his own. “I can’t just leave Mother and Father. They expect so much from me. I can’t just let that go. But… if I ever can, I will. I promise.”
They kissed one last time for goodbye. Kathryn gave Thomas a shaky smile. “If you ever need me, call my name.” Then she grinned, kneeling and embracing the neck of the creature beside her. “I would come to you ‘Over hill, over dale, through bush, through briar, over park, over pale, through flood, through fire…’”
Thomas wasn’t sure whether he was laughing or crying as girl and lyrre disappeared with a sound like a slammed door.
She might actually have preferred it.
I know I would have.
Every place Thomas went in the city was haunted by the ghost of a girl who’d never been there. Kathryn would have delighted in poking fun at the ugly buildings, danced and laughed for joy at the sight of the library, caught her breath in silent amazement when they entered the lobby of the Eripa Public Theatre...
I got so used to her being there, I can’t imagine life without her anymore. Except I don’t have to imagine. It’s happening to me every day.
He couldn’t even read, since his mind insisted on endowing every heroine with Kathryn’s voice and every hero with his own. Instead, he wandered around the house, dancing a few steps here and there, staring out windows for hours. Some part of him was aware that his parents had noticed the alteration in him, but he didn’t care.
It’s not like they can make things worse for me.
Then one night, his father waylaid him after dinner. “Just a moment, Thomas.”
“Yes, sir?”
“You and I are going on a journey tonight. Pack a bag for two or three days, just in case.”
“Where are we going, sir?”
“Never mind that now, we have to hurry. The train leaves in forty minutes.”
“To Bolintula, boy, to the Military Academy. I want you to have a few days there.”
Thomas looked curiously at his father over the teapot. “A few days, sir? Why?”
Lord Samuel smiled, with a hint of steel behind the expression. “Because, Thomas, it will be your home for this coming year. You’re enrolled for the next semester there. It starts next week.”
“Next week!”
“I know it’s short notice, but to be perfectly honest, you’re underfoot these days. I wouldn’t mind it if you were doing something useful, but I won’t have you mooning around the house, disturbing your mother. The Academy will make a man out of you, and prepare you to fight in this war.”
“But—”
Lord Samuel raised a hand. “You can either go quietly, or make a fuss about it.” His expression warned the fuss wouldn’t make any difference. “Which will it be?”
Thomas closed his mouth and got himself under control. “Quietly, sir. I think it would be better for everyone that way.”
His father nodded briskly. “That’s my boy.”
No. Thomas looked out the window at the wintry countryside. I’m not your boy. Not anymore. If you don’t want me underfoot and disturbing you, if you want me to fight in the war, then that’s what you’re going to get…
Lord Samuel looked up at the cloudless sky. “Looks like a full moon tonight.”
“No, sir. Full moon is tomorrow.”
“Scholar of the skies now, boy?”
“I just like to keep up with things, sir.” Thomas let his fingers trace the first few steps of a Light Moon dance on the back of his mitten.
He slept uneasily that night, and tried to pay attention to the tour of the Academy the next day. Only one moment stuck out in his mind—when he asked the literature teacher about courses on the classical plays that he loved so much, the man looked blank for a moment, then burst into laughter. “Courses on those old fossils! You’ve got a sense of humor, haven’t you!”
Another voice echoed in Thomas’s mind as the man laughed.
“I’d bet I know more languages than you do.”
“We run together, then play word games and make stories from them.”
“We both like basking in the sun and reading books, especially the classics.”
He was more sure than ever what he had to do.
That evening, in his own room, Thomas packed his bag by moonlight. Then he knelt by the fireplace and lit the bundle of Academy entrance papers within. When it was burning brightly, he spoke into the flames.
“Kathryn.”
It was all that he dared to say.
Everything he wanted to say beat inside his brain.
I want you. I need you. I’ll go with you. I was wrong. My parents don’t care. Or maybe they do, but they’ve forgotten how to show it. Please, please, come back to me.
After a minute, he rose restlessly and began to dance, the first Light Moon dance that Kathryn had ever taught him.
She said to call her name. And I know she has fire magic. This has to be the way.
But what if it’s not?
He danced faster to banish the thought, matching his steps to the crackle of the flames. The dance was nearing the end of the men’s solo. Soon the women should enter.
But no one will be here to dance it with me…
A door slammed behind him. Thomas spun around, half in surprise, half in the steps of the dance, and caught his breath as dark braids whirled past his face. Kathryn matched his cadence and intercepted his hand, smiling her dazzling smile.
The perfect words rose to Thomas’s lips like magic, fitting the rhythm of their feet perfectly.
“What relish is in this? How runs the stream?
Or I am mad, or else this is a dream.
Let fancy still my sense in Lethe steep…”
Kathryn joined her voice to his as they spun together in the dance of joy.
“If it be thus to dream, still let me sleep!”
Thomas snatched up his bag without missing a step, and Kathryn waved her hand to the flames in the fireplace, bringing them soaring up and around the two. As her magic twisted them towards a better place, Thomas laughed joyously, feeling and half-hearing the load he’d carried all his life falling unheeded to the ground.
Exit lovers, center stage, triumphant.
