Read Online Woman Who Loved the Moon by Elizabeth A. Lynn - Free Book Online Page B

river, now strong and swift in its bed. Jael flung off her clothes. Her body was slim, hard and flat, golden-white except where weather had turned it brown. She dipped a toe in the rushing stream. “Ah, it’s cold!” She grinned at Akys. “I’m going to dive right off this rock!”
    Akys sat on the bank, watching her, as she ducked beneath the flowing, foamy water, playing, pretending to be a duck, a salmon, an otter, a beaver, an eel. Finally the cold turned her blue. She jumped out. Akys flung a quilt around her. She wrapped up in it, and rolled to dry. The long grass, sweet with the fragrance of summer, tickled her neck. She sat up.
    “Hold still,” said Akys. “You’ve got grass all over your hair.” She picked it out with light, steady fingers.
    Jael butted her gently. “Why don’t you go in?”
    “Too cold for me,” said Akys. “Besides, I’d scare the fish.” She looked at Jael. “I’m clumsy.”
    Jael said, “That’s not true. You move like a mountain goat; I’ve watched you climbing on the rocks. And you’re never clumsy with your hands. You didn’t pull my hair, once.”
    Akys said. “Yes, but—you look like a merwoman in the water. I’d look like an old brown log.”
    Jael said, “I’m younger than you. I haven’t had to work as hard.”
    “How old are you?” Akys asked.
    Jael struggled to see her face through timebound eyes. “Twenty,” she lied.
    “I’m thirty-two,” said Akys. “If I had had children, my body would be old by now, and I would be worrying about their future, and not my own.”
    Jael let the ominous remark pass. “Are you sorry that you have no children?” she said.
    “No. A promise is a promise. For the beauty I lack—a little.”
    “Don’t be silly.” Jael bent forward and caught Akys’ hands between her own. The quilt slid from her shoulders. “You are beautiful. You cannot see yourself, but I can see you, and I know. Do you think you need a man’s eyes to find your beauty? Never say such nonsense to me again! You are strong, graceful, and wise.”
    She felt Akys’ fingers tighten on her own. “I—I thank you.”
    “I don’t want your thanks,” said Jael.
    That night, Jael lay in Akys’ arms on the narrow, hard, straw-stuffed pallet, listening to rain against the roof slats, pat, pit-pat. The hiss of fire on wet wood made a little song in the cabin.
    “Why are you awake still,” murmured Akys into her hair. “Go to sleep.”
    Jael let her body relax. After a while Akys’ breathing slowed and deepened. But Jael lay wakeful, staring at the dark roof, watching the patterns thrust against the ceiling by the guttering flames.
     
    * * *
     
    Autumn followed summer like a devouring fire. The leaves and grasses turned gold, red, brown, and withered; the leaves fell. Days shortened. The harvest moon burned over a blue- black sky. The villagers held Harvest Festival. Like great copper-colored snakes the lines with torches danced through the stripped fields, women and children first, and then the men.
    Smoke from the flaring torches floated up the mountainside to the cabin. Akys played her flute. It made Jael lonely again to hear it. It seemed to mock the laughter and singing of the dancers, and, as if the chill of winter had come too soon, she shivered.
    Akys pulled the winter furs from her chest, and hung them up to air out the musty smell. She set a second quilt at the foot of the pallet.
    “We don’t need that yet,” said Jael.
    “You were shivering,” said the witchwoman. “Besides, we will.”
    One night they took the quilt out and lay in the warm dry grass to watch the stars blossom, silver, amber, red, and blue. A trail of light shot across the sky. “A falling star!” cried Akys. “Wish.”
    Jael smiled grimly, watching the meteor plunge through the atmosphere. She imagined that it hit the sea, hissing and boiling, humping up a huge wave, a wall of water thundering through the harbors, tossing the Rysian ships like wood chips on