Moon

Since I troubled the wolves, they made me wear the moon in my eyes. There’s only one day of the month, full moon, where I can see with my whole vision. Then the moon wanes gibbous and a little slice curves off the edge of my sight. It shifts to its third quarter and I can only see the left side of anything, and by the time it’s waned crescent I’m all but blinded. Then it starts to come back. My eyesight waxes again. More of it becomes mine. 

I shouldn’t have gone into the woods.

Wolves can see in the daytime. They took that away from me a curve at a time, but they can see all right. 

I had a choice, they said: pack or prey. And if I chose pack, then pack shares. 

I couldn’t hunt like them, I said. I couldn’t even hunt with a gun; I didn’t know how. 

That wasn’t what they wanted, the wolves said. The town was growing; houses were edging and edging into the fringes of their home. They couldn’t go in themselves, not without a bullet and a knife in the belly and a tanner’s barrel for their pelt. But they needed to keep an eye on it. Two eyes. 

Pack or prey. And if I was pack, I could share my eyes. 

So when the moon waxes, the wolves get more of my sight. A big, gibbous-shaped window through which they can look upon the town. 

I shouldn’t have gone into the woods. 

I went looking for mushrooms, because my sister-in-law said I was a useless mouth. It was the wolves got our mother and father, that’s what everyone swears, and everyone says too that it was good of my brother to take me in. He hit me when we were children and everyone said that was what little ones do when they play; he hit me when he was man, and nobody said anything. 

So I went into the woods. I’d tracked mud into the house and my sister-in-law made me clean it on my hands and knees because she said I’d only break the mop. And then she said I was a useless mouth and a burden on her hands, and she hadn’t vowed to marry her husband’s sister brat alongside her husband. So I went looking for mushrooms, which would be soft as skin against my hands and never spoke.

The wolves’ den was well hidden, and if I hadn’t been running, and if I hadn’t been crying, I wouldn’t have tripped over it. But I fell hard, and the soil broke under me, and I heard the shrilling under my bones: tiny voices, shrieking for their mother. 

Then there were teeth at my throat, and I could hear the sound of paws scrabbling, digging and digging and digging to loose the little ones from the ruin I’d made of their home. 

The mother wolf dug them free and licked them clean, and the father wolf gazed in my eyes. Pack or prey, he told me. 

I begged his pardon. I told him I hadn’t meant to.

The father wolf’s teeth rested light against my throat. The town was spreading into their woods, and I’d broken their home. I was bringing the town with me, and now I had to choose. 

 His eyes were brown as hazelnuts, and they met mine. So I chose. 

I shouldn’t have gone into the woods. But I was a brown-eyed girl before, and when I struggled around, seeing only a sliver, no one said I looked any different.

I broke things more at home, of course. I spilled water and walked into tables. That explained all the bruises, even the ones my brother gave me. He didn’t hit me less now I was a blind girl, or at least that’s what everyone started to call me. He hit me more, because now I was unlikely to be lifted off his hands by any good husband. 

The wolves saw him raise his fist. In the pack, the father wolf will nip a cub if it doesn’t mind its manners, so at first they didn’t say anything.

They saw men forging axes and saws. They saw plans for new houses. 

None of those new houses would be for me. My brother was right: no one wanted a girl who couldn’t see. 

We lived in the house we’d been born to, my brother and me. It passed to him after our parents died; no will left behind, but nobody questioned his right. 

I was good for sweeping it; enough boxed ears and I could learn to work from right to left, or from left to right, depending on which side of my eyes I could see out of. I was good enough to milk the goat; I could do it by touch, and with enough boxed ears I could learn not to spill the bucket as I carried it in. I was good enough to scrub and carry; I followed the same path between the woodpile and the front door, the front door and the fireplace.

I was on that path one day, and something stopped me. Light flashed in my eyes, filling them up with dazzle so suddenly that I felt the prickle of it all through me. Crackling shock like the touch of teeth on the nape of my neck.

So I stopped, and I saw that a sharp-edged log was across the path. I’d have tripped hard if I’d gone another step.

That was when my sight was at its poorest, just waxing crescent. Soon enough I could see a little more, and a little more, and I worked as hard as I could. I went into the woods again to find mushrooms, but I didn’t find the wolves. I heard a soft howl, far away, long removed from where they’d seen me headed.

The mushrooms were fat and beautiful, though, gleaming amidst the ferns. They were easy to find. From the side of my eye I could see the track-marks scraped away around them; claws and pads had raked back the leaf litter so the mushrooms would shine out to me. 

My sight was almost whole for a week. I found I was still watching the men at work, as they forged knives and tanned hides and traded for guns. The town was waxing. 

I said to my brother that it might be inviting wolves into our streets if we pressed too far into the forest. Who asked me? he said. I said they’d killed my mother and father as much as his, and I had a right to speak, and he hit me. 

My sight waned and I took to using a stick to find my way. I’d learned how to sweep from watching dogs, their sensitive noses racing to and fro to sniff out the earth before them. 

I worked cleaning late into the night. It was when I was nearly blind that, getting into bed, I felt that sudden shock of light again; it knocked me upright, like something grabbing me by the scruff. 

It took a candle and some waiting before I found the adder in my bed.

I shouldn’t have gone to the woods. But I did.

They didn’t hide from me this time. A father wolf may nip his pups to keep them out of trouble, but he’ll fight for them as well.

They say my parents were killed by wolves, I told them. Is that true? Did you do that?

They answered me. They told me no. 

A girl who can’t see very well is clumsy. She knocks things over.

My brother and his wife were sleeping in their bed when the candle tipped. It was early morning and I’d gone to milk the goat, and so it took a long time for me to realise the house was a-flame. The whole town understood that. Everyone knew I was half blind. 

You’d think a half blind girl would still notice her skirt was trailing fire like a ragged scarf, catching the houses that were rising on the edge of town, pressing deeper and deeper into the forest. But a useless mouth with moonstruck eyes doesn’t have much between her ears. Ask anyone.

By the time the fires sank, half the town was charred and smoke rose to the skies thick as pine trees. The great building project wouldn’t stop for ever, but it had stopped for now. Enough to last another spring, perhaps, another litter, another season for the wolves. And when they rebuilt again – well. The way those wolves came out of the wood, snatching up the scattering livestock and racing away with the wealth of the town in their jaws, you’d think they had eyes in the town. You’d think the evil things knew just where the town would be weakest.

In charity, the parson’s brother took me in as a maidservant. I could mind his goats and chickens and pigs; I had a way with beasts, he said. Even the sourest-tempered sow, I could silence with a glance. He was a weighty man, who didn’t bother to hit me if I kept quiet, and when he and the other men of the town discussed their plans to rebuild, he didn’t bother to send me from the room.

Sometimes I went to fetch mushrooms still. I knew the paths and could smell them out, he believed. The den was open to me now; I could lie with my head on a heaving ribcage and smell the dog-stink and the wet, panting breath, and let a long, flexing paw wrap around me in a gentle embrace. A father wolf will love his pups. 

I was a quiet girl, half-blinded. Waiting for the day the wolves would once again come out of the woods. 

posted by Kit Whitfield  # 8:00 am