Moon Song (33 page)

The chrysalis had lain in the grove by the head-stone, a dark gold, fat cigar shape, like some of the early ideas about alien spaceships from black and white films. Embar sat on guard beside it, upright with his tail curled around his paws just as they had left him hours ago, as though he had never moved. The Ellyon too sat around, watching, waiting.

Mark and Isoldé went to sit on the tree trunk close by. As the first star showed in the darkening sky there had been a crack, like a branch breaking, and a fissure had appeared in the chrysalis.
There was a thin, transparent skin inside, they could see hands trying to tear it open, like a chick trying to escape from an egg. Mark moved to help but one of the Ellyon got in his way.

‘No!’ he said. ‘The man must find his own way out. If he cannot birth himself then he’s not fit to be reborn.’

Mark sat back, tense. Isoldé took his hand. Hers was cold and shaking slightly, he could feel the tension in her too. Tristan had to make it …or what would happen if he failed?

The struggle continued. At last they saw Tristan biting at the membrane, it was difficult, the skin was stretched tight inside the chrysalis but eventually a tooth made a nick in the skin. He pressed his face against it, working his teeth, getting an eyetooth into the hole, pulling, tearing, making the hole bigger until he could get his hands into it. The stuff was very tough, it took all his strength to make the rip bigger but he persevered. Gradually it widened so he could get his arm and shoulder through it, he pulled and stretched, got a leg through. The membrane ripped. Tristan fell out of the chrysalis and onto the grass. He was naked.

Isoldé leapt up and went to him, pulling the shawl from her shoulders to cover him. This time the Ellyon didn’t stop her. Mark followed, snatching up a blanket and helping her wrap the man.

He was breathing, great shuddering gasps, eyes still closed like a new-born kitten. Embar came close and licked gently at his eyelids. They opened, cat and man stared at each other, then Tristan smiled. He tried to speak but only managed a wheezing, choking cough. Isoldé was there with the water, letting a tiny amount dribble into his mouth. It worked. After a few moments Tristan’s breathing eased, he pulled himself to sit up and was able to swallow properly as she held the cup for him. He came back to consciousness.

‘Thank you,’ he whispered. ‘Thank you.’

‘No problem,’ Isoldé said softly, holding him upright with one
arm while she kept the water near his lips.

‘No problem at all,’ Mark added. ‘Welcome back.’

Isoldé was amazed at the difference. Now Tristan’s eyes were bright, sharp, focusing on them and everything in the grove. The very feel of his skin was different, tighter, firmer, the muscles strong. She realised that, when they had made love, his body had been relatively weak and flabby in comparison to now. Memory told her this was nearer the Tristan she had known at the masterclass, although that one had been well on with the disease and not as fit as now.

To Mark it seemed he was helping to hold the Tristan he had known as a boy so many years ago, before the disastrous North African trip where Tristan’s compassion for a dying little boy had given him HIV. His arm tightened round Tristan’s shoulders, touching Isoldé as well. Mark felt Tristan sense the caress and move his body in response.

They got him dressed and fed, just last year’s wrinkled apples and nuts that the faer folk brought, and water from the spring.

‘Fruits of the forest,’ the little man said. ‘They’m best for y’ now. Nothing too much.’

Tristan had nodded, accepted the fruit and eaten slowly. It grew dark, the time of the song had come.

As the clear pure tones of Tristan’s voice spun out across the air Mark could see the song-threads weaving. To actually see the threads of sound as well as hearing them was amazing, he had to stay very focused in order to keep watching the levels on the portable recording gear he’d brought with him. He pulled the headphones over his ears so he heard exactly what would go on the recording, hoping it would lessen the impact of seeing the threads of sound. It didn’t.

‘Please,’ he whispered. ‘This is quite awesome but can we turn the thread-sight down some? I’m finding it very hard to concentrate.’

The threads faded gently like a rainbow after a storm. ‘Thanks! That’s better.’

‘You only have to ask,’ said a voice at his elbow.

Mark jerked, he’d been engrossed in his own thoughts. Looking round, there was Pan, sat cross-legged beside him, cleaning his hooves.

‘Sheesh! I wish you wouldn’t do that, I almost jumped out of my skin,’ Mark said crossly.

‘Good for you,’ Pan replied, equally acerbic. ‘Out of your skin you might be less bound up in your head. You need to get used to reality. Spent all your life, so far, thinking I was some figment of your imagination, that I lived in your head. I don’t, I’m real and I’m here. Anyway the inside of your head is cluttered up like a Victorian boudoir!’

‘Thanks a bunch!’

Pan laughed. After a moment Mark laughed too.

‘You’re right,’ he said. ‘It’s just I’m not used to you being visible and audible in the same world as me.’

Pan snorted. ‘You’d better get on with the recording,’ he said.

Looking across the grove again, Mark saw a shadowy figure growing at the far side of the clearing. Long ears seemed to stand up from the head, huge eyes, liquid brown like a limpid stream, were followed by whiskers, twitching nose and soft brown fur. Long hind legs stood the hare up tall so she could see what was happening. The light began to change, darkening the sky. A pale silvery-gold light began to spread from the bottom of the sky upwards. The full moon rose. The moon-hare stood waiting to enter the grove.

Tristan repeated the chorus of the song again.

The hare-girl’s long, silky ears extended, stiffening, quivering, pointing across the grove towards the singer. He was singing her names. He was, wasn’t he? It made her blood quiver, her skin itch under the fur. She looked down at the paw-hands, the claws. She saw the tatters of her dress half-covering her furry nakedness. Her shape was upright, like a human, but her gait was bowed, bent from the long legs bent backwards at the heels of the huge feet so she didn’t stand straight. She was beginning to see herself through the words of the song, the singer. It had never happened before.

Oh, she knew herself when she peered into a pool, saw the reflection of her face hanging there in the water. She knew it was her face, she had tried moving her mouth, her whiskers, putting a paw to her nose. The reflection copied her every move. It was like the ghost-part of a soul, lost in the mists of half-being. She had seen plenty of those, most recently the singer’s own. But now the woman had brought that part back to him and he was singing. He was singing her song.

Toadstool? The hare-girl’s brow furrowed, her big eyes stared across the space between them. What did he sing of? Pictures formed in the space, she saw the plant-roots hunting, searching, reaching out for water and food. There was something else there. Silvery threads, seeming to grow out of nowhere and reaching out to the rootlings. There was a bright flash as they connected, rootlings and threads. Right through her body the hare-girl felt
the lightning-spark of life. The threads made it possible for the roots to feed, to drink, to live. And they were something to do with her …but she wasn’t a toadstool. Was she? No, she could see better now, the silver strands were brought to life by the toadstool-beings. She could see them now, like flickering sparks of light darting across the darkness of underground.

She realised she was underground, in the soil, the winter soil, when all is sleeping up above where the low sun shines for just a few hours every day. Then, all the life is deep within, growing, changing, preparing for the springtime birthing.

The paw-hands reached out to touch the silver threads. As they did another lightning-jolt cracked through her body. Something had gone out of her and, at the same time, something had come into her. She was a part of the process. As she touched, so the light brightened, the lightning life-force felt more potent, the rootlings grew stronger.

‘If I touch them it makes the life flow better,’ she whispered, beginning to understand. ‘They need me.’ She looked down at the paw-hands. The skin showed through the fur now, the fingers were longer, they had nails instead of claws. ‘I am shifting,’ she whispered. ‘Shifting …changing …just as Rootmother said.’

Suddenly she stood up on tiptoe, teetered there. ‘What?’ she thought. ‘What?’ The sun balanced in front of her eyes, like on a see-saw. It teetered too.

‘What?’ she whispered again. ‘What is he singing now?’

Springtime? Yes …that was when the sun passed over the threshold. The humans called it equi …equi …something? Equinox! The word bounced into her head as Tristan sang. She knew it now, it meant equal nights. Yes! After that point the nights got shorter, there was more light than dark each day, up until the high point at midsummer. She felt her own innards churning at the thought, thinking about male hares, about how they would chase her, about how she would box them away, making them work and run and fight to claim her. Her teeth bared in excitement.

And in the ground …she could feel and see it now. The shoots pushing up through the earth. Incredible! They were so fragile but they heaved aside the heavy winter soil and thrust themselves up and out into the light, growing, fecund, full of flowering buds.

Her hands …hands now and no longer paws …reached out to touch the newborn shoots. Again, as she did so, sparkles of light sprang in the shoots. Some reached upwards through the baby plant, going on into the air, catching the sunlight, drawing it down into the green leaves, making food for the plant. Other light-sparks went downwards into the roots, connecting with the toadstool-threads, drawing on water and the chemical atoms of food in the soil.

The Moon-hare girl quivered. The plants needed her. She was needed. She was a part of the whole, it couldn’t work without her. It was the most glorious feeling she had ever had. No longer was she a spare-part, a useless shifter who couldn’t shift properly, something that had to be cared for and looked after by all the others. She was useful. People would come to know her, know
her usefulness. Tristan would help.

The sun stood still …

Tristan sang and sang. The moon-hare-girl listened and listened. He was singing of her, of what she did. He was singing of life and death, the widdershins and deosil of being, coming and going, growing up to die down.

‘One must follow the other,’ she whispered.

That was wise for her, the sort of thing she thought of the
root-mother saying, not herself. She looked about. There, beside her, was the root-mother, her rose-cabbage face folded into smiles. Beside her again was the blue water-girl, shimmering, and she was smiling too, holding a green shoot in her hand. Yes! Water! That was it, she realised. Water was what the leaves were about. The root-mother held the strands of the michoriza, the toadstool-strands, connecting the roots to the soil and the soil to the roots, making it whole. The water-girl carried the flow up into the budding plant, bringing forth the leaves, making it possible for the plant to feed from the sun.

‘We need you,’ the root-mother told her.

‘We need you,’ the water girl agreed.

And there was the beech-girl, all green and gold and lovely, swaying gently in an almost-breeze that was as much sunlight as air.

‘We need you,’ the beech-girl added her voice to the other two. ‘You make the cycles of growth, of death and rebirth possible. Come alive to us. Come alive to the humans. Bring us alive.’

The moon-hare-girl smiled. She reached out hands, hands not paws, and touched each of her sisters. ‘I am coming,’ she said with confidence now. ‘He is singing me alive.’

The fiery red fruiting harvest sister came to sit with them, reached a hand out to touch the moon-hare-girl. Fire spun through her, lighting her up.