Read Online The Next Full Moon by Carolyn Turgeon - Free Book Online Page A

graceful white shape next to her, Ava surely would have been lost. Insome spots she could barely see in front of her.
    â€œWe would go with another of our friends,” Helen continued. “The three of us were inseparable. We loved it, swimming together.”
    â€œIs that how my mom and dad met, at the creek?”
    â€œYes,” Helen said.
    Ava wracked her brain but could not remember her father ever saying anything about this. Nothing about how they’d met, at all. All her own little imaginings started shifting in her brain, and now she pictured the woman from the photos—her mother—swimming in the creek with her friends. A sunny day, in summer, the sunlight dappling the water through the leaves and branches. Her father fishing maybe, maybe swimming himself. He’d grown up here, around the creek. His father had fished the creek, too, and his father before him.
    â€œYour father loved your mother right away. We could see that he did.”
    â€œDid she love him right away, too?”
    Helen paused. For a moment there was just the soft rustling of the woods, the padding of their feet on the earth, the snapping of twigs they stepped over. “I think she did. It was hard to tell with her sometimes. The thing was, though, Ava, they were never supposed to be together.”
    â€œThey weren’t?”
    â€œOh no. It was forbidden. Where we come from . . . well,we are not supposed to be with human men. Men like your father.”
    â€œWhat do you mean, human men?”
    And just then, they stepped into a clearing. One second the world was dark and hushed, the next the moon was bright overhead, its light pouring down on them.
    â€œOh!” Ava gasped. “I’ve never been here before.”
    â€œWe’ve wandered a bit from the main path,” Helen said, turning to her. She was smiling, her face radiant and her jewel eyes sparkling. Just the way Ava imagined her mother would look.
    The air was warm, with a slight breeze pushing through, and everything smelled of grass and earth. Ava stepped into the clearing. In the moonlight, the grass was like a secret pool of water, shimmering and moving. Ava half expected to slip under.
    â€œIs this where you’re taking me?” Ava asked, seeing that Helen herself had stopped and seemed to be waiting for something.
    â€œYes,” Helen said, reaching out and grabbing Ava’s hand, as if she’d read her mind earlier.
    Helen’s skin was smooth and cool. Ava clasped her hand back.
    She thought, then, about her father, sitting along the side of the creek right now. How close was he? Ava had lost all sense of direction. But she stared up at the moon andimagined him out in this same strange darkness, hearing the same hush of the forest at night, waiting for the dazzled fish to surface from the creek, staring up at the same moon and looking for her mother the way she was right now, the way she always did when the moon appeared bright and full over the earth. Ava thought, for the first time, that it might be nice to join her father sometime, even if it made absolutely no sense to catch the same fish over and over and throw them back in.
    Suddenly a bird swooped in from overhead and landed in the clearing.
    A swan.
    Ava pointed, almost crying out. “That swan!” she said, turning to Helen, whom, to Ava’s surprise, didn’t seem at all taken aback. “I think I saw it before.”
    And then another swan swooped down, and another and another, and Ava realized they all looked the same. They kept arriving from the air, and then they emerged from the forest, too, like white shadows, until the clearing was filled with them, appearing from every direction, from the woods and the air.
    Ava’s heart hammered in her chest. Part of her wanted to run; the other part wanted to stay and see everything, no matter what happened.
    She didn’t understand how Helen could be so calm. Helen just stood watching them,