The Next Full Moon

  She looked up and once again, the sky was like water she wanted to dive into. She had a bizarre, sudden memory from inside her swan body: of herself and her mother and father at the pool, of her sitting on her father’s lap, the two of them watching as her mother walked out on the diving board, stretched her hands over her head, and dove into the water. The smell of tanning lotion and chlorine and melting candy. The three of them, together.

  Then she ran, jumped, spread her wings and felt herself lifting up and up, just barely clearing the trees, and then, before she knew it, before she even had time to think about it, she was flying. Not just on the back of a bird now, she was the bird. Beautiful and whole and flying, with stars spinning and twirling above her, leaves swaying under her, the whole world unfolding in her path, opening up like there was a fire ripping through it. She went faster and faster. Higher! Ducking her head to miss the stars, diving down until she could see the tops of the chimneys of the little houses right in the center of town. There was her school! The university, its giant football stadium with the lit-up billboards outside. And then, past all that, more mountains, more trees, more winding swerving creeks and rivers.

  She laughed and whooped, and the honking sounds that came out of her were lost in the wind.

  This was her life! She wasn’t dreaming!

  She sped up even faster, relaxing her body into the air. Ecstatic.

  And it occurred to her: This is what her mother had given up, to be with her father for the time that she was. Wasn’t it? She gave up all of this to be in an earthbound, human body, and she’d even become pregnant in that body. Pregnant with Ava. Wouldn’t she have felt so awkward and strange? Wouldn’t she have missed this?

  How wonderful it must have been, the first time her mother took again to the air!

  Ignoring the pang of sadness that accompanied that thought, Ava swooped down and turned a circle in the air, twisting her long neck, tucking her feet up into her body.

  The energy she had! She felt she could fly like this for hours. Maybe she could visit New York! Or Alaska! She could probably go anywhere, couldn’t she?

  Woooooooo!

  Tempting as it was, she was afraid of going too far this first time, just in case she got lost or ended up getting suddenly tired and going kaput in the middle of New Jersey. But it was so nice, being in the air. Not even the heat had any effect on her as she whipped through the wind, which was cool and perfect as it slid through her feathers.

  There would be time for all of that, later.

  So she turned in circles, dipped down, and flew over the treetops and houses, crossing the forest and passing over the creek, which looked like liquid silver—inviting and beautiful. She went across the valley they all lived in and then back again, criss-crossing it like the topping of an old-fashioned apple pie, the way Grandma Kay made it. When she passed over the forest again, tilting left and then right, even flipping over in the air, she was no longer even thinking about what she was doing. Just playing with the air and the sky and the stars. The stars spinning like tops, like toys spread out under a Christmas tree. And then, on a whim, she turned from the stars and just folded her wings and dove straight down, right into the water. Right in with the trout!

  Ahhhh!

  The water folded over her like the best, most comfortable blanket, or like the loveliest nap after a long day. She pushed forward, letting it envelop her, her wings tucked tight against her body. It felt so wonderful! She thought about the water at the lake, how she felt so alone and good when she was immersed in it—though the memories of her human body felt weirdly distant to her now—how free she felt, and then she rose to the water’s surface, paddling her feet. Her body half in water and half in air. The air streaming through her wet feathers and the fish slipping under her. She laughed out loud, and her honking pierced into the quiet night.

  How wonderful—to be back in the water, to be able to come here whenever she liked.

  Then she launched herself up again, folding her legs and feet under her, and flew.

  The world was so open to her!

  She moved through the air, back and forth over town, until she suddenly recognized Grandma Kay’s house under her. She dipped down and glided just over the dim streetlamps, past the line of houses with porches and rose bushes jutting out in front of them. She had flown right to her grandmother’s house, without even thinking.

  On impulse, she swooped down and landed on the lawn. It seemed so long since she’d seen her grandmother, though it had only been a few weeks before that Ava had stayed home sick from school and secretly paid her grandmother a visit. She laughed now, thinking of how freaked out she’d been—Ava, not her grandmother—that day. How awful it had been, having feathers pop out all over her body. And now look at her. Flying over the valley, turning circles in the air.

  She laughed, honking.

  A few minutes later the front door unlatched and her grandmother appeared on the porch, dressed in a light blue cotton robe. Ava stepped back, almost stumbling over. It had to be way past midnight—what was her grandmother even doing up?

  Ava had thought she had the whole night, the whole valley, all to herself.

  “Ava?”

  Ava watched her grandmother in shock. Had she even heard her correctly?

  Grandma Kay squinted into the night. “Ava, are you there?”

  Ava caught herself, reached back and transformed into her human form again, so that she was standing on her grandmother’s lawn in her pajamas, holding her feathered robe. “Grandma?”

  “Oh, it is you! Come in, dear, what are you doing out there?”

  “But . . .” Ava stammered, not sure what to say. So she kept quiet, folding the white robe in her arms, and headed up onto the porch and into the house.

  Her grandmother reached out and touched her, smiling and nodding her head as she patted Ava’s arm. “Can I get you some cocoa, honey? Are you hungry?”

  “No, I’m fine, Grandma.”

  “I baked some cookies this afternoon. Snickerdoodles.”

  “Oh. Well, okay, maybe one.” Ava wasn’t going to let a little weirdness come between her and her favorite cookies. Especially if Grandma Kay had made them.

  “Then come help me get a tray together, and we can sit down and have a nice chat.”

  “Okay,” Ava said, reaching out to help her grandmother down the hall.

  Grandma Kay had a whole tin of Snickerdoodles sitting out on the counter, as if she’d been expecting Ava’s visit, and there was a teapot of hot water on the stove.

  “Were you . . . Did you know I was coming?” Ava asked.

  “Oh no.” Her grandmother chuckled, waving her hand and taking out two mugs from the bright red cabinet. “I was just making myself some hot water with lemon.” But she proceeded to pour two hot mugs of water, plunking a lemon slice in one and a bag of cocoa mix—the kind with marshmallows, which Ava loved—into the other.

  Ava shook her head and placed the mugs and cookie tin onto one of the big silver trays on the counter, then followed her grandmother into the living room.

  “So, honey,” her grandmother said, settling into her rocking chair and tapping the coffee table, indicating where Ava should set the tray, “tell me what’s going on with you.”

  “Umm.” She didn’t know where to start, or what to start with. It was totally weird to be here like this with her grandmother acting like everything was normal. “A lot.”

  “Well, why don’t we start with the swan maidens?”

  Ava had just taken a huge bite of Snickerdoodle and immediately spit it out. Crumbs spewed over the table and over the carpet.

  “Oh my!” her grandmother said. “Are you okay, dear?”

  “Yes,” Ava gasped, choking a little still. She coughed. There was cookie stuck in her throat.

  “Take a sip of your cocoa.”

  Ava obeyed, letting the warm chocolate run over her tongue and down her throat. There was wet, chewed-up cookie on her nightshirt, she saw, and she pl
ucked it off and set it on the table. “What did you say, Grandma?” she managed to get out.

  “To take a sip of cocoa, dear.”

  “No before that.”

  “Oh, that we should start with the swan maidens.”

  “The swan . . .” Ava was too shocked to finish. She just stared at her sweet old grandmother, who was rocking innocently back and forth as if it were normal for her granddaughter to show up in her pajamas past midnight on a school night, as if there was nothing wrong at all with serving said granddaughter cocoa and casually asking her about swan maidens.

  “They have come to you already, haven’t they?”

  “Yes.”

  Her grandmother nodded. “Good. It’s about time. They couldn’t before now, you know, so don’t be upset with them.”

  “But . . . I don’t understand. You know about them?”

  “Yes, honey.”

  “You know about my mother?”

  Grandma Kay sighed. “As soon as your father came home and told me he’d fallen in love with a swan maiden, I knew it would end up in tears and heartbreak. Swan maidens are not meant to mate with humans. Humans are not meant to mate with them.” She sighed again, more heavily this time, as she reached for her lemon water and took a loud sip. “But he refused to listen to me. He was in love, he said. As if it were that simple.” She shook her head. “I should have known it would happen, with the amount of time your father spent down at that creek.”

  “I can’t believe you’ve known all this time, Grandma! Why didn’t you tell me?”

  She gave Ava a sad, concerned look. “You can’t tell a child something like that. We had to wait until you were old enough for them to come to you themselves, so you could understand. How do you tell a three-year-old that her mother is a swan? We didn’t want you to think your mother had left you on purpose. And what if we told you and then you left to find them and never came back? Think of your father. He is terrified you will leave him one day, too.”

  “But . . . my mother did leave me on purpose. Didn’t she?”

  “Oh honey, no. No no no. She loved you so much, Ava. She would have stayed with you and your father forever if she could have.”

  “Then why didn’t she? And I can’t believe . . . I thought he didn’t know! Why . . . How could neither of you have told me the truth? About my mother, about me!” Ava burst into tears. One minute she was sitting there in shock, the next tears were streaming down her cheeks. Thank goodness her grandmother was nearly blind. Ava hated to cry in front of anyone, especially her evil secret-keeping grandmother. She had known!!

  “Ava, Ava,” her grandmother comforted, trying to hoist herself out of her rocking chair now.

  “Stay there,” Ava said. “Don’t hurt yourself.”

  “Your grandfather told me I had to be careful, talking to you about this stuff. Oh, I wish he could tell you himself. I think your father was waiting for the full moon, to be sure. He’s so scared, Ava. He worries so much about you. And then you got sick and everything . . .”

  “Grandma, I don’t understand anything you’re saying! Why did my mother have to leave?”

  Her grandmother took another sip of her water, and set it down. “Let me start at the beginning,” she said. “You deserve to know all of this. You poor girl, you must be so confused.”

  “Yes!” Ava was sitting on the edge of the chair now. Waiting. “Hello! Of course I’m confused, thanks to you and Dad! Now please, Grandma, tell me what’s going on!”

  “Well, this, here, this valley,” her grandmother began, “has always been a popular spot with swan maidens. Not everyone will admit that they’re here, but why else do we have all these swans lurking around? Not everyone’s seen a maiden that they knew of, and fewer still have seen one make the change . . . but”—she leaned forward—“my own great-grandmother used to tell me stories about them. And I always knew they weren’t just stories.”

  Ava had plenty to say but forced herself to keep her mouth shut and let her grandmother talk, even if she was taking far longer than Ava would have liked. She couldn’t beLIEVE her grandmother had known all of this, this whole time, and not said anything at all!!

  “I never told your father those stories, though,” she said. “I’m not sure why. I guess I didn’t want to scare him, though maybe a little scaring would have done him some good, kept him out of those darn woods and away from that creek. But oh boy, as soon as your grandpa put a rod in your daddy’s hand that first time, he was hooked.” Ava’s grandmother stopped and slapped her knee. “Hooked! Get it?”

  “Grandma!”

  “Okay, okay. So yes, your father has always been a fisherman. We do have the best trout fishing in the world right here, some say. But why the swan maidens had to come down the exact moment they did, I don’t know. Plenty of the men around here have fished these waters their whole lives and never caught sight of one. But your father. Well, one evening he was out there all by his lonesome—he always was a little bit solitary, even as a young thing—when he looked up and saw three swans fall from the sky and to the side of that creek and turn into maidens right there smack dab in front of him.” She shook her head, letting out yet another dramatic sigh. “What’s a young man to do? He’d seen a miracle, and your mother might as well have thrown an arrow straight from her own hands and through to his heart. He told me all this later, of course, but I knew when he came home that day that something had happened to him. You could reach out and smack the spell that had come over him. Your grandfather didn’t see it, of course, but I guess I’ve always been a little touched.”

  “So what happened? How did they end up together?”

  “Well. Your father watched those swan maidens swimming, but really he had eyes only for your mother, not her friends. And he sat there watching them until they changed back and flew away.”

  “She left?”

  “Yes, but he waited for her to come back. Waited and waited, with all the patience in the world, which love will give you, hiding behind a tree alongside the bank he knew the maidens would return to. And then they did.”

  “And then what?” Ava asked breathlessly.

  “He stole her robe.”

  “He what?”

  “He watched to see which robe was hers, and then he took it when they were in the water. When your mother and her friends emerged, her friends put on their robes and flew away, and your mother was stranded there.”

  Ava’s mouth dropped open. How could he have done such a thing? Her sweet, goofy, handsome father!

  “Don’t judge him too harshly, Ava. He was in love, and love will make you crazy. It was the only way he could have been with her. And he would have given the robe back to her—he wouldn’t have forced her to stay against her will—but she fell in love with him, too.”

  “But he tricked her!”

  “Well, by the time she knew that, it was too late. And I doubt she would have cared. She was as crazy as he was! Some couples are like that, you know. Just madly, crazy in love with each other, no matter what. They don’t care a thing for reason and have no sense at all.”

  “So she was just standing there, with no robe?”

  “Yes. And he came out and took care of her, put his jacket around her and took her home. It was a full moon that night, of course. She was not meant to stay in human form any longer than that, but then she was trapped. But happy to be trapped, that’s the thing. Your mother and father were very, very in love, Ava. And then they were married, and then they had you. I knew it couldn’t end happily and I tried to warn him, but your father would have none of it.”

  “So what happened then? Why did she leave?”

  “Oh honey. She grew ill. Your father took her to doctor after doctor, but no one could figure out what was wrong with her. She got thinner and thinner and took to her bed . . . Your father had to care for you, and I would come over and take care of you when he was off teaching, while your mother sat watching you, too weak to hold you—it made her so sad, not being able t
o hold you—and then one day your father brought out that robe, which he’d hidden away in the attic. He didn’t realize what he was doing, he was just desperate for her to get better. And the moment he showed her that robe? Well, she had no choice but to put it on, and next thing your father knew your mother was a swan again, the way she’d been the very first time he saw her.”

  “She had no choice?”

  “She was dying, Ava. She was not supposed to be a human. Swan maidens can change in the full moon, but that’s it. They’re meant to be swans.”

  “Is that . . .” A realization started to hit, and Ava felt like the whole world was shifting to its side and staying there. “Is that why he goes to the creek? On nights of the full moon? Is he . . .”

  “Yes,” Grandma Kay said, her blue eyes glowing in the dim room. “He goes to see her.”

  Ava paused, thinking. “And so that day? She just turned into a swan and flew away?”

  “Yes. The moment she put on that robe, she was herself again.”

  “He just let her go like that?”

  “He had to, honey. She was never meant to stay. She stayed longer than she ever should have, and she would have stayed until she died if it had been up to her. Because of you.”

  “Because of me,” Ava repeated.

  She sat back, imagining all of it, feeling that warm moon inside her grow bigger and bigger. Her grandmother was tired now, she could see. She had been expecting her, hadn’t she? Ava smiled as Grandma Kay’s eyes fluttered shut, and then open again. It was so late! Ava herself would be exhausted the next day in school, and she had not one but two tests. They were easy ones, though, language arts and world history, and besides, what did tests matter now? There were only two days left of school, her birthday was in one week, and now she knew exactly what she was going to ask her father to give her. It would be the best birthday—and the best birthday present—ever.

  As she flew home, her mind whirled with everything her grandmother had told her. She couldn’t believe it, how beautiful and sad it all was—and that all the weird, freaky things that had been happening to her were all part of such a romantic story. Her cool, crazy dad, in love with a swan maiden, visiting with her mother under every full moon. At the same time, Ava felt such loss, thinking of all those nights that they sat together while she slept at home in bed, aching for a mother who was just minutes away.