The Woman Who Married the Man in the Moon
by Peter S. Beagle
Findros had just begun to sniffle, and Mourra was still impatiently denying her own rising fear, when the tall man with the ragged cloak and the funny, pointy hat fell out of a tree in front of them. The children both yelped and recoiled, but only for a moment: there is simply nothing alarming or impressive about a man, whatever his size, wearing a hat that looks like a cross between a dunce cap and a crown. Raised not to stare rudely at strangers, Findros and Mourra nonetheless gaped shamelessly as the man stumbled to his knees, then quickly found his feet. He was certainly the tallest person either of them had ever seen, yet not big, not in a menacing way, like a giant or an ogre. Politely, he was slender, lean; less politely, gangleshanked; rudely, skinny, meager, gaunted-down. His thinness made his hands and feet look bigger than they really were, like those of a puppy yet expected to grow into his floppy paws, while his generous, flaring nose definitely belonged on an older, fiercer face. And if the green eyes were at once deep and distant, his voice was light and warm, a voice that tried not to call attention to itself. The man asked, “Children, are you in trouble? Are you lost?”
It was the word lost that did it — that, and the genuine concern in the tall man’s tone. Findros promptly burst into tears, and Mourra swung a hard little fist at him, hissing, “Stop it, you baby! Don’t you cry!” She herself would have died a silent martyr before ever admitting to any sort of fear or pain; though where that streak in her came from neither her mother Sairey, nor anyone else in the family, could ever have said. Mourra herself had long ago decided that it was a special gift from the father she could barely recall — he had died when she was not quite four — and treasured it accordingly. Findros had no such tradition to keep up.
“No,” she said loudly to the stranger. “We’re not lost, we’re just going home a different way. I keep telling him.”
The tall man rubbed the back of his neck, shaking his head. He said, “Boy, I’ve mislaid the road myself, all my life. Believe me, it’s not the end of the world.” But Findros howled as loud as ever, pointing a dirty forefinger at his sister. The man raised heavy eyebrows without speaking.
“He keeps saying I got us lost,” Mourra told him wearily. “But I didn’t, I never did. We went to the picnic, and then on the way home he was the one who just had to pick blackberries, and then we got turned around a little bit, but I still knew right where we were, and then —” her voice faltered for the first time — “then we had to go round through Craighley Wood, because old Mr. Willaby’s turned his bull into the north field, and so then we…”
“Then you losted us!” Findros seized on her hesitancy, triumphant in terror. “You losted us, and you don’t know the way home, and it’s getting dark —”
“I do so know how to get home, you liar!” The presence of the strange tall man made Mourra feel much younger than her eleven years, which in turn made her angry. “But I’m not going to move an inch until you stop your baby bawling! Look, I’m sitting down right now, you little baby!” She promptly plopped herself down by the roadside, in a patch of dry grass, folding her arms and grinning mockingly at Findros. “And if you don’t stop that crying, I’ll just sit here until it’s really dark, and the nightfliers will come and eat you, and they won’t leave a thing except your anklebones and your nasty dirty toes —”
“Enough.” The tall man raised his hands, gesturing them both to silence. He sighed in the unmistakable way of a tired, exasperated grownup. He said, “Well, I had other plans, but never mind. I will see you home.”
Findros stared, and went back to just sniffling. He eyed the tall man suspiciously. “You don’t live here. You don’t know where we live. You don’t know anything.”
From another adult, stranger or no, Mourra would have expected anger at such insolence, even braced herself to defend Findros from swift and merited chastisement. But the stranger only smiled. He said, “That is perfectly true. I come from very far away, and I have never been in this country before in my life. But I will still take you home, because I am a magician, and magicians can do things like that. Come.”
Without another word, he turned and began walking away from them down the narrow little road, still muddy from the rain of two days before. To Mourra’s amazement, Findros — from birth as wary as any wild animal of anyone he didn’t know — ran after him, taking hold of his left hand, exactly as he did with their mother when the three of them went out walking together. Mourra wavered briefly between fascination and distinct annoyance that her brother should have admitted an outsider to the kind of confidence he almost never granted her; then got to her feet and hurried after them, placing herself firmly on the stranger’s right, though without so much as looking at the inviting free hand, easily available. She decided on the spot that she was far too old to need such childish reassurances of protection, and she made the vow stick all the rest of that day.
“Why were you up in the tree?” she heard Findros questioning the stranger. “Were you doing a trick? Gicians do tricks.”
“Do they so?” The tall man looked mildly surprised, as though he had never heard of such a thing. “Well, would this count, do you suppose?” In rapid succession, lightly ruffling Findros’ hair, he produced a handful of cowrie shells, along with a turtle egg, a few old coins and a tiny bell, all of which he handed to the boy.
Findros closed his hand over his new treasures, but his mouth remained slackly open in wonder. Mourra said scornfully, “You put all those things in his hair. You had them in your hand, up your sleeve. I saw.”
The green eyes considered her, and the tall man nodded slowly. “You’re quite right. It was just a trick, nothing more. That’s what I do, tricks.” His voice sounded to Mourra as though he were biting down on something hard. “But then again, I know your names — Findros and Mourra, children of Sairey. There’s a good trick, surely?”
Both children stared — Findros in wide-eyed fascination, Mourra in sudden alarm. No one outside family was ever supposed to know a person’s birth name: you could never tell what might be done with it by the ill-meaning. The stranger said, “My name is Schmendrick.”
Findros shook his head. “That’s a funny name.”
The stranger agreed cheerfully. “It is, indeed, but I’m used to it. Now that’s a fine, strong name you have — Findros! I’d much rather have a name like that.”
“I’m just Findros for right now.” The boy made a gesture with two fingers, as though he was flicking something away into the grass. “When I grow up, I’m going to tell people my name’s Joris, because that was my father’s name. Our father’s name,” he added, in a quick concession to his scowling sister. “He’s dead.” The stranger nodded sympathetically, but said nothing.
A low-hanging twig brushed Mourra’s hair, and a small spider dropped onto her arm. She screamed involuntarily, shaking the creature to the ground, lifting her foot to crush it. Schmendrick said quickly, “Ah, don’t do that,” and although he neither raised his voice nor reached to interfere, she moved away without stamping on the spider. This made her even more annoyed with the tall man, for reasons she could not explain. She kicked a stone, and followed sullenly on.
The magician said, “I knew a woman once who collected spiders.” Mourra shuddered in revulsion, and though she made no sound, Schmendrick turned his head to regard her out of his green eyes. “She treated them so kindly,” he went on, “and they became so fond of her, that in time the spiders wove all her clothes, every last garment she wore. What do you think of that, Mourra?”