The Rise of the Fire Moon

  ***

  Palva came down to the hollow as dusk was bringing pink to the horizon. She was carrying a clump of green leaves sprinkled with delicate purple flowers in her jaws, which she spat out onto the boulder holding the rest of her herb supply.

  “Comfrey,” she explained to Tir, though he had not asked. “It’s for your burns. Nerasa just brought it into the redoubt.”

  “The redoubt…?”

  “The camp. You called it a camp.”

  “Oh.”

  Tir looked away. He no longer cared about stinging herbs. What was a brief moment’s worth of pain now? There were more pressing matters at hand. The sooner he was healed, the sooner he could leave this hollow and search for Arwena, Kiala, and the rest of his pack. He would put up with the pain as long as it cured him.

  Sure enough, Palva was busy grinding the purple flowers into a thick poultice. For some reason, she looked angry. She stomped and pounded each stem as though it had done her a personal wrong. As she was working, she was growling something under her breath, but Tir could not make out any words. Leaning closer, though careful not to let her see, all he could hear were the words, “And she expects me to…can’t leave… damned prophecy…”

  Tir jolted back into his lying position as Palva turned around, now holding a bundle of leaves. She stalked across the hollow and over to Tir’s side, glaring at the ground and still mumbling through her teeth. Tir tried as best as he could to lie still as Palva pressed a bit of the poultice onto each of his red burns. Bracing himself for the sting, he was quite surprised at the cool, soothing sensation that smothered the pain from his bruises and burns. He sighed and dropped his head back onto the soft grass.

  Maybe, he could ask Palva to borrow a few herbs. That way, he could leave sooner and apply them to himself when they were needed. But looking back at the Gatherer as she kicked a stone out of her way, he decided to wait until she was in a better mood.

  The time passed on swift wings as Tir lay in the grass, thinking to himself and relishing the soothing feeling of the comfrey. It was not long before he was watching the sunset with an absent-minded sort of interest. The sunlight on the ground had burned rich and golden as leaves in the autumn as it gilded each blade of grass and sharpened the inky shadows that were spreading across the ground. Tir closed his eyes as a night breeze hissed through the grass. His spirits were much higher than they were a few hours ago. His pack had to be out there somewhere—no, no, they had not died, he told himself—and wherever they were, he would soon find them. But for some reason, the thought of leaving made him uneasy. He had no reason to be—the alpha wolf had said he could go when he wished, hadn’t she? Was that why Palva was angry?

  When Tir opened his eyes again, the golden light was gone. It had darkened to a deep red that stained the clouds and doused the fields in sinister light. Tir shuddered at the sight. Red was the color of blood and fire. As long as he lived, never again did Tir want to see fire. How he hated the color red.

  “Another day dies on the world, and Rya turns her back on us,” said Palva, her voice quiet and flat.

  Tir looked around with surprise. He had forgotten Palva was still there. She was lying on the grassy ground near her herb-boulder with her head rested on her paws and her eyes lifted skyward. She no longer looked angry; her face had smoothed back to the serene mask that he had grown accustomed to seeing. The red fire-light of dusk lit a note in her eye, however, that made it seem as though she was looking at something else. Like she was watching something arrive.

  “Who’s Rya?” he asked, turning his face away from the horizon and to the grass at his paws, where the slender shadows were widening with comforting slowness.

  Palva turned to look at him; and judging by the look of mild surprise on her face, she had forgotten where she was as well, having been lost in her own thought.

  “You don’t know who Rya is?”

  Tir shook his head.

  “Rya is the mother of us all,” Palva said, turning her eyes back up to the fading sun. “And every day, she watches the world from her den in the sky.

  Tir considered this, but was unable to make anything of it. “Is she one of the stars?” he asked.

  Palva shook her head. Standing up, she swept her tail towards the sky. “Rya watches to world with her two eyes. The first eye, the sun, sees everything in the world. This eye is full of light and warmth for her children on earth, and it makes a golden glow for us to see by. But though this eye sees everything, it feels nothing.”

  Tir listened, mystified. “And the second eye?” he asked, though he felt he already knew the answer.

  “Rya’s second eye is the moon. Her sun-eye easily tires, so she must turn her head and watch with her moon-eye. Her moon-eye is blind, and that is why it is such a milky white color. Because this eye is blind, it sees nothing, and so it has no light for us. But though it cannot see, it feels everything. Rya’s second eye feels the pulsing of blood through each living creature; it feels the steady rush of the river, the swaying of trees, and even the hidden secrets of the future. But it also feels pain. This is the eye that answers to our cries, the misery of us children on earth. This eye knows our sorrow. There are those that tell us how every time a wolf dies, it sheds a tear for that wolf. The tear stays where it falls, a shining droplet of cold light in the sky. The black sky is scattered with Rya’s tears, for they will always remain to remind us of the wolves that have passed before us.”

  “In my pack, it was different,” Tir said. “We believed that the stars were the spirits of those who had died, not tears.”

  Palva lowered her head. “Well,” she said. “There are always two sides to a story like that. Not everyone thinks the same. Some believe that when the wolf dies, it is lost and wandering. It hears the call from Rya, and rushes up to join her. Instead of crying for the loss of that wolf, Rya rejoices for one of her children has returned to her. So the dead wolf’s spirit joins her in the sky. In the day, it plays and runs among the clouds, free as a bird. And at night, its shining eyes watch the earth along with Rya’s moon. We call them Guidelights.”

  Palva looked back up at Tir . For some reason, she looked tired. “So it depends on who you listen to,” she said. “Either the stars are the sorrowful tears of Rya, symbols of the pain and evil that is on earth, or they are simply the eyes of those who have moved on, watching us through the darkness.”

  Tir looked up at the glittering sky. Was Arwena up there now, watching him? Or was she gone forever, her only memory another shining tear to join the thousands?

  He looked up at Palva, who was examining the stars again. “Why did you choose to become the Gatherer?” he asked, once again finding himself in desperate need for a change in subject.

  Palva turned around, a strange glint in her eye. “Why did I choose to become the Gatherer?”

  “Well, I suppose, if you’d rather not say—”

  Sighing, Palva turned and looked back up at the glittering sky. “No, that’s fine,” she said. “But if you must know, I didn’t choose to become the Gatherer. No one chooses to become the Gatherer,” she added, with a trace of asperity. “I was born into it.”

  “You were born into it?”

  Palva gave a small, wry smile. “Every seven years, on the night of the blue moon, a litter of pups is born in the pack. Or so, I say a litter, but it is not really a litter of pups. For this litter has only one pup. This pup is always female, and born with her eyes open. This pup is to be the next Gatherer.”

  “So you …?”

  “Yes, I was one of those pups. The mother of the litter dies as the blue moon wanes.”

  “I’m sorry,” Tir said, thinking of Arwena.

  “No, that’s fine. I don’t remember her anyway,” Palva said. “And the Gatherer must work alone. The Gatherer must be tied to no family. That’s what they told me, at any rate.”

  “But who trained you? Surely someone had to have taught you of the herbs.”

  Palva nodded. “Yes,
the previous Gatherer, Tsila, taught me everything she knew. Everything I need to know. But when I no longer needed her—which was, traditionally, in the third summer of my life—her job was done. She too, departed to join Rya.”

  Tir stared at her for a while.

  “How could you stand it?” he asked. “I mean, when you were a pup—weren’t you miserable? It wasn’t your choice.”

  “I didn’t like it at first. But as I grew up I understood the importance of the tradition. My pack needed me.”

  “So you have no family at all? No friends?”

  “The pack is my family,” Palva said. She smiled—a real smile, the first he’d seen. “And I am not without friends.”

  There was a long silence while Tir pondered this and Palva resumed her watching the stars, though Tir had the feeling that her thoughts were wandering elsewhere. She twitched and shuddered, then stretched her head over her shoulder as though to scratch something on her flank. Without turning around, she spoke, her voice little more than a whisper.

  “And there is something else about this Gatherer pup. When it is born, there is something that removes all doubt that this pup is to be the next Gatherer, there is always something missing, something wrong.”

  Palva’s eyes were gleaming silver in the cold glitter of the stars so that they looked like two miniature moons. Tir recoiled; there was something eerie about her.

  “Wha—what do you mean?”

  Palva gave a faint smile. Without a word, she turned around and Tir was able to see the other side of her body for the first time. He gasped in shock.

  Where there should have been a left hind leg, there was a twisted stump. Horribly misshapen, it extended to an inch or two above the ground, shorter than her other legs. It looked as though someone had grasped it in an iron fist and wrung it like a wet leaf.

  “Yes,” she said. “All Gatherers are the same—different, I mean. The last one, my teacher, was missing an ear. We both got off lucky, though— there was once a Gatherer who was born without speech. Couldn’t even growl.”

  But Tir wasn’t listening any more, still gaping at Palva’s twisted leg. He would never have known. But of course, he had been asleep for most of the time Palva was around. And when he was awake, he was barely conscious—he wouldn’t have noticed. She moved as smoothly as though she had all good four legs—except for the time when she had first found him. He remembered that she had had a limp then, but he hadn’t been able to see why. Perhaps she only limped when she was upset…or very excited about something.

  “They say,” Palva continued. “that Rya does it on purpose, though it is a constant question as to why.”

  “The Spirits make no mistake,” Tir whispered, remembering Misari’s words. “It doesn’t matter to us why.”

  “The Spirits?”

  “They were what my old pack believed in.”

  “Don’t you believe in them?”

  Tir hesitated. “I don’t know,” he admitted. “It’s hard to believe something’s watching over us when so many terrible things have happened.”

  “You just said yourself that they make no mistake. Maybe there was a purpose for all those troubles. Life can’t be all sun and breeze—then the sun would lose its value, wouldn’t it? Troubles make you strong. You’ll need it someday.”

  “But your pack doesn’t believe in The Spirits. Rya is different—”

  “It doesn’t matter what name you use,” Palva said with a dismissive shake of the head. “At the end of the day, it’s all the same thing.”

  Tir silenced. Palva wasn’t an old wolf—perhaps in her fourth year or so, much younger than Misari. But she had many seasons’ worth of wisdom. Did that come with being a Gatherer? His eyes traveled back to her malformed leg. The Spirits seemed like a simple tale for pups compared to Palva’s description of Rya. In his old pack, they had no such traditions. He looked again at the twisted flesh and bone where Palva’s left hind leg should be and shuddered. He wasn’t sure that he liked the fate of the Gatherers. To be born into the world with no other siblings, a mother that soon dies, and missing a part of your body. To know that in ten years, when the next blue moon waxes in the sky, that a new pup will be born into your place, and when the pup no longer needs your advice, you will die.

  “You need to rest,” Palva said, her voice brisk and sharp again. “Stewing over troubling thoughts will cause your wounds to widen, and you want to be healed as soon as possible, yes? And anyway, about the Gatherer tradition—it’s my fate, not yours. Don’t worry about it.”

  Tir looked at her, but her pale eyes were unreadable. She walked over to her herb-boulder without even the slightest hint of a limp, and gathered the comfrey poultice in her jaws. After adding a bit more of the soothing herb to his burns, she turned back around and curled up in her own nest.

  Tir tucked his muzzle between his paws and tried to fall asleep, but found he was not the least bit tired. Strangely, after hearing Palva’s story, he was even more determined to find his pack. He glanced up at the shimmering moon, which was glowing like a white hole in the tattered black fabric of the sky. Stars were scattered like raindrops, like bright berries. What were they? Tears? Or watchful spirits? The entire idea was so strange to him.

  But whatever they were, he hoped his sister was watching over Arwena. It wasn’t her fault, after all.