“Oh, I think you will,” Mourra’s mother said. “And I think that flower may very well survive.”
“Then it will be her doing, the magic of that child’s will, and none of mine.” Schmendrick’s voice had risen sharply. “No, I didn’t put it in her hair…but I didn’t find it in her head, either. Or perhaps I did, and never knew. I never know why any attempt at enchantment succeeds or dissolves in my hands. I search for patterns, for signs, guideposts, masters, for anything to tell me who I am — what I am, wizard or carnival cardsharp, either one. I could live if I knew!”
At the window Mourra clutched her flower, understanding nothing of his words but the sorrow and loneliness under them. The magician chuckled suddenly, mimicking himself. “‘I could live…’ Now, that’s funny. That is funny.” He turned and bowed to her mother, not at all mockingly, but with a kind of slow, formal courtesy. “Well. Thank you for that excellent dinner, and for…for the loan of your children. Good night.”
He had been turning the funny many-pointed hat in his hands all the while they spoke. Now he set it on his head, bowed a second time, more briskly, and turned away. Even from her window, even in the dimness, Mourra could see him straighten his thin shoulders under the ragged cloak, as though settling a peddler’s pack. Then he set off, and the moon-shadows swallowed him quickly.
Sairey said after him, “I will tell you a story.” Her voice was soft but very clear in the still night.
Mourra could only tell that he had halted and turned by the angle of the funny hat. Her mother said, “You are a magician who cannot believe in his own gift. I am a widow with two children. I do not imagine that I will ever marry again, since I have no intention of ever giving another hostage to a sky that can snatch love away from me so randomly, so absurdly, so completely. So I believe in nothing — nothing — except looking at my sleeping Mourra, my Findros who always curls up into such a tight little ball, twice and three times during the night.” Sairey’s voice was now as tight and thin as her lips became when she was truly angry. Mourra put her fingers to her own mouth and bit down hard on them.
Schmendrick did not respond. Sairey said, “So I tell myself stories, just as you do, to comfort myself, to endure — simply to get through to another morning. And there is one story in particular that has always meant something to me. Different things at different times, perhaps, but something always. Sit down where you are, magician, in the soft grass, and listen.”
The night had grown so dark that Mourra could not even be certain whether Schmendrick was still there, until, after a moment, she saw the pointy hat slowly lower itself. Sairey began, “There was a woman once who fell in love with the Man in the Moon — yes, a moon story of my own. This woman loved the face she imagined she saw — everyone sees something different in the moon, you know — and she let it be known that if that man should ever choose to walk on this earth, she would marry him instantly. As to whether or not he would have her, she never questioned that, no matter that she had always been a plain woman, even rather drab and dowdy. She knew beyond any doubt that the Man in the Moon would come for her in time.”
“And so he did.” The tall man’s voice was almost without inflection.
“Well, somebody did. Because one evening a strange man came to her door.”
The pointy hat nodded. “And naturally told her that he was the Man in the Moon.”
“That was not necessary. She merely looked at him and knew, as happens sometimes. To anyone with any doubts, she pointed out that there was no longer a man visible up there — which was true, because, for whatever reason, there had come a season of clouds and mist hiding the surface of the moon, and there was nothing at all to be seen but a few dark craters. It was plain for anyone to see that the Man in the Moon had at last come down to claim her.”
“Which, of course, he had not done at all — merely taken advantage of a lonely woman’s foolish fantasy. I told you and your children better tales.”
“Perhaps because we were not forever interrupting you, ordering the story this way and that. Listen to me now, pay for your dinner. Like herself, this lady’s lover was no great beauty, at least on earth, being rather short and decidedly gray-complected, with no grace that any of her friends ever noticed. Nevertheless, by all accounts he was kind to her, and she appeared to be blissful in his company. She listened enraptured to his own stories of his palace in the moon, and sighed in wonder as he described the beauty of shooting stars, comets and constellations seen from the far side no human ever sees. Who knows anything about anyone else’s happiness, after all?”
“Go on, then,” the magician said when she fell silent. “What became of them?”
“He only came to her by night, of course, just as the moon would, and she thought it perfectly proper that there were always one or two nights in the month when he did not come at all. And it must be said that his attentions made a wonderful difference in her appearance, for her hair and her skin and her manner alike all took on a certain shimmer very like that of the moon itself, and as time passed people began to say that she walked in moonlight, such was the radiance of her joy. It can happen so, even with foolish fantasies.”
Resting her chin on her folded arms in the window, Mourra thought, yes, that was how she looked when Papa was here — shimmery. I remember. I do.
As though she had heard her, Sairey went on, “Her man suited this woman very well, in the moon or out of it, and so she lived contentedly for quite a long time. And the world jogged along serviceably with no Man in the Moon — especially since many folk see no Man there at all, but a Woman, or even a Fox. And they went on together as well, those two.”
Schmendrick said, “I can see sorrow coming. I can smell it on the wind. This story is going to end badly.”
“Stories never end. We end. If we could but live long enough, we would see how all tales go on and on past the telling. Now there came a night when the woman could tell that her lover was not falling restfully asleep in her arms, as he had always done, nights without number, even though he left her before each dawn. So she said to him, ‘Beloved, what troubles you? Tell me, and I will help if I can.’ For loving had made her sensible of others’ griefs and fears — which also happens, as I am sure you know.”
“I have been…told so. Go on.”
“And the Man in the Moon — if that indeed is what he was — answered her, ‘My dearest Earthwoman, one love of my endless lunar life, the time has come for me to return to my lonely home. It is home to me no longer — this, our bed, this is my true home — but the moon is my fate, the moon is where I am ordained to be. If I stay away even one day further, it will fall from the sky, likely causing the world’s end. Tonight must be our last together, for the very planet’s sake.’”
“What nonsense!” The magician was surprisingly indignant. “The scoundrel was just seeking to be rid of that poor woman!”
“Was he, then?” Sairey’s voice was as slow, and even tentative, as though she were telling the story for the first time. “Yet when she said to him, ‘May I not go with you, as I have been ready to go from the night we met?’ he replied, ‘I had not dared to ask you. I do not ask it now. You will be lonely for the Earth, and there will be no returning. I cannot take such advantage of you.’”
Schmendrick snorted contemptuously. “One of the oldest ruses in the world to discard a woman. Your Mourra would never be taken in so easily.”
“Perhaps not. She is a very perceptive child. But this woman answered, ‘I was lonely for the Earth until you came. You may be from the moon, but you are my planet — you are my Earth. I know this as an animal knows its home, if it knows nothing else of the universe. Take me with you.’