Issue #303 • May 7, 2020

“February Moon,” by Josh Rountree

“Fox Red, Life Red, Teeth Like Snow,” by Devin Miller

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FEBRUARY MOON

by Josh Rountree

         Something killed our rooster and three of our brown hens during the night. Thin ice crusts the ground, and it breaks in delicate patterns as I step toward the scattering of feathers and bones. Blood lies dark against the earth. It rarely snows here in the winter like at home. Only ice and gray rain that settles on the trees and pulls their limbs toward the ground like they’ve lost the will to fight for their own lives. These are gnarled, fearful trees, nothing like the commanding black forest of my youth, but their shadows still grow long enough to hide monsters.

         The chicken coop door has been pulled from the hinges, and the splintered remains stand evidence to the force with which it was removed. If I were a stupid or fearful woman, I might convince myself that a rawboned coyote was to blame; they forever haunt these hills with their hunger. But I’m neither of those things, and I know how a wolf attacks.

         I’ve lived among them my whole life.

* * *

         Gretchen is already busy with breakfast preparations when I come in from clearing away the carcasses. There’s a pot of water not yet at a boil, and I scrub the blood from my hands as Peter pulls on his shoes and his coat, in a hurry to milk Klara and get the rest of his work behind him. He’s eight years old, two years younger than Gretchen, and I expect tears from him when I tell him about the hens, but he only nods with the air of stoic acceptance that he learned from his father.

         Another day of cold survival stretches before us all. In the nearly six months since my husband and eldest son have been gone, we three have learned to face our days one at a time, placing them each after the next like bricks in a road that we hope will lead to somewhere better.

         “Mother,” says Gretchen. “We’re nearly out of flour.”

         “I’ll make a trip into town today.”

         “Were there any eggs?”

         “They were destroyed,” I say.

         “Klara is safe?” asks Peter.

         “Yes, thankfully,” I say. “We’ll have milk at least.”

         The smell of the sausage that Gretchen is frying is a harsh reminder that we’re almost out of meat too. My husband always kept us full of venison and small game, and I would be angry at him for how he left us on the edge of hunger were I not largely to blame for his absence.

         “Peter, I need you to take the rifle this afternoon and bring back some dinner. And be careful. Whatever killed the chickens might still be about.”

         My children are not fools, and they almost certainly know what killed the chickens, but neither of them argues and Peter won’t show any fear. Sending him alone beyond the threshold and into the frozen hills summons old guilt from deep inside me, but what else can I do? It’s no job for Gretchen and if I don’t travel into town we won’t even be able to make bread.

         When the din of morning chores gives way to the quiet advance of afternoon, I shove a crust of bread into Peter’s coat and put the rifle in his hand. Even in his wool hat and mittens, he manages an eerie impression of his father. His jaw chews at the cold, and a still confidence nests in his blue eyes. I admonish him to be careful, and above all, to return before nightfall.

         My children have spent so much time living with terrible realities that I’m afraid they no longer take the world’s dangers seriously. I wish for them to simply be children, and for myself to be burdened with nothing more than a mother’s routine fears for their safety. Gretchen should not lie awake at night listening for monsters, and Peter is certainly too young to be the man of the house. Yet here we are. Hugging him is like hugging a warm corpse, and when I release him, he trudges into the cedar line without a farewell.

         Gretchen leads our horse from the barn and wraps me in one of the extra saddle blankets like I’m her newborn babe. She named the horse Herr Butter when she was younger, though the animal is brown as mud. Gretchen waves as I ride away. Wind tugs her hair into an unruly blonde mess, and she retreats indoors. I pray that I won’t return to find my children torn bone from bone. I will be racing nightfall myself, and the moon is never far away at this time of year.

* * *

         Travel into town on horseback takes over an hour. In the springtime the ride is pleasant enough. Tall willowy grass rides the breeze and thorny cactus patches erupt with red buds. Bluebonnets pour down the sides of every rolling limestone hill like spilled paint. The air is birdsong and honeysuckle and the electric touch of approaching thunderstorms, and I can almost imagine myself happy here.

         But spring is still weeks away, and winter refuses to relent. The landscape around me is the color of bone and rot. Was it any better in my birth country? I remember the warm sweet taste of my grandmother’s strudel and the long afternoons we spent among the trees together, listening for the forest’s secrets. But I remember blood too. And I remember feeling helpless.

         The town of Broken Oak has less use for me than I do for it, and I’m thankful that few people are about when I ride into its rutted streets. German immigrants have settled this part of Texas in large numbers, yet Mattias saw fit to plant us near this thoroughly American town, where my poor English brands me an outsider and worse, unintelligent. I can understand conversations well enough, but when I try to summon the proper response in English, the words don’t always come. I want to scream at these people. You don’t know my mind. I can quote long passages from Aristotle and sonnets from Shakespeare. I can compose symphonies in my head. Because I cannot yet explain these things to you in your language, you think you’re smarter than I am? You’re no better than me.

         I lash Herr Butter’s reigns to the post in front of the mercantile and hurry up the wooden steps, eager to complete my errand and return to my children. The heat inside the store is immense. Fire rages in the belly of a fat woodstove, and men are gathered around it, rubbing their hands and talking in low voices as the flames paint unsettling masks on their faces. The stove is poorly vented and mesquite smoke clings to the ceiling.

         The mercantile belongs to Mr. Starling, and he stands behind the counter in a stained leather apron with a weary air about him, like spending his days hawking frayed rope, horseshoe nails, and penny candy is too large of a burden for any man’s soul. Sweat trails down both of his temples, and he smells vaguely of stale tobacco.

         “Well Frau, what are you doing out today?” he asks. “It’s near froze solid out there.”

         I produce a weak smile and open my coin purse. What I would like to say is “Children must eat, Mr. Starling, whether it is warm or whether it is cold,” but what I say aloud is, “Flour for bread, please.”

         “Oh yes ma’am,” he says and begins rummaging through the shelves behind him.

         As I wait, two men separate from the pack surrounding the stove, drawn by the scent of what they consider weakened prey. Mr. Grandly is a grizzled, silver haired goat farmer whose boots always smell of manure. His companion, Mr. Elder, is handsome if a little on the thin side, with preposterous lamb chop whiskers and a voice like a ruined preacher. They position themselves on either side of me, close enough that their shadows join on the counter.

         “Hello Frau,” says Grandly.

         “Hello.”

         “How are your children?”

         “Very well.”

         He nods his head. “Glad to hear it. Now listen, you need to be careful up there by yourself, you understand. Your husband ain’t come back, has he?”

         Mr. Grandly knows very well that my husband has not returned. They presume me a widow. A woman with hungry children and some modest acreage. They covet all of what I have and are ill equipped to hide their sin. Mr. Elder is particularly forward with his desires, and he inserts himself into the conversation with an odious bark.

         “Grandly, you know he’s not come back, else we’d have heard. No reason to hound the poor woman.”

         “Well, I ain’t hounding her,” Grandly says.

         Mr. Elder smiles. “Frau. You must be home before dark, you know? There are certain to be Indians about.”

         “Red savages,” Grandly says.

         “A fat white moon drives the Comanche into a frenzy,” Elder says. “They’ll be on the prowl for several nights.”

         “They killed a family over near Fredericksburg last night,” Grandly says. “Tore off their faces. Took a little boy’s feet with them too.”

         I think of Peter, alone in forest, hunting for dinner, and my heartbeat quickens.

         Mr. Starling places a bag of flour in front of me and hisses through his tumbledown teeth. “Enough of that talk, with a lady in the room.”

         Mr. Elder places a hand on my back and leans close enough for me to feel the heat of his breath when he speaks. “I will accompany you home to make sure you arrive unharmed.”

         “No, I am fine.”

         “Then I shall ride out later to ensure that no savages are lurking. We were just discussing a night hunt wherein we might encounter and kill some of them. It will be no extra trouble.”

         “I have a rifle. We are fine.”

         Mr. Elder removes his hand and withdraws the bulk of his animal mass. The smell of his sweat and his lust remain close, but I refuse to be overwhelmed. I place some coins into Mr. Starling’s outstretched hand, snatch up the bag of flour, and leave Mr. Grandly and Mr. Elder standing at the mercantile counter. They call after me like yapping dogs, encouraging me to hurry home, to lock tight my doors, to shutter the windows and to listen for strange noises in the night.

         I don’t require their counsel. I will do all of these things and more. Mr. Elder is right about one thing. There are terrible things in the world that grow bold when the moon is fat. I know them. If he intends a night hunt, then he should pray it is only the Comanche that he finds.

* * *

         Peter is not home for the evening meal.

         We dine in silence, Gretchen and I, unwilling to voice the fear we share. Afterward, she practices her arithmetic, scratching figures on a slate, erasing, starting again, a ritual to occupy her mind. I seat myself in the rocking chair on the front porch, and even outside I can hear the click clack of her chalk and the tuneless humming sound she makes when she’s deep in thought.

         The wind is cold enough to burn, but I can’t countenance the thought of Peter alone in the darkness without anyone to share his misery. Colder still is the guilt I feel. Leaving Gretchen alone in the cabin so I might hunt for Peter in the night would simply trade fear for fear. Yet Peter’s father and older brother would be hunting for him even now if not for my actions.

         The moon is a raging white fire in the sky, and I can feel the way it pulls everyone and everything towards it. Herr Butter and Klara moan and stomp from within the barn, victims of the moon’s spell. My hands fidget with the arms of the rocking chair and my jaw clenches to the point of pain as I work to bite back the cold chatter of my teeth while I stare off into the tree line.

         Something emerges from the nearest stand of wind-beaten cedars. Hulking and slow, it proceeds apace toward the house, and when I rise from my seat and lift up my lantern, a weak yellow light paints the gloom and I can make out the form of my son.

         “Peter!”

         A small doe lies across his shoulders, and he struggles beneath the dead weight of the animal as he trudges toward the porch. Blood soaks his shirt and breeches and lies thick on his face. When he greets me with the thinnest of smiles, he looks like a child who’s just dug his way out of his own grave.

* * *

         That night I dream of home.

         I am young and dancing and surrounded by trees so massive that they banish the daylight. So tall that their tops pincushion the low winter clouds. Snow-covered branches form a white canopy overhead, and I pretend I’m a guest of some Nordic prince in his grand ice palace. The air smells of pinecones and frost and dainty sugar candies and I’m desperate to remain in this beautiful dream forever, but I can feel the call of the path at my feet.

         An outsider would never even notice it, but I’ve lived in this forest all my life and I know the ways in and the ways through. Heel and toe I follow the memory of my own footsteps deeper into the maw of that great forest, drawing closer to my Grandmother’s cabin, a place I love far more than any prince’s castle; a place warmer than any mother’s arms.

         But Mattias is there before me. He is always there.

         A grim harbinger of what my life will become, he sits on the stoop of the cabin, awash in blood, an axe nearly as tall as I am laid across his knees. He is no prince, but he will become my husband one day. On this day he is winter pale from blood loss, and the world’s largest wolf lies dead at his feet. The cabin behind him is too quiet, flooded with darkness, and when Mattias lifts his eyes to mine I see the reflection of my Grandmother’s death. Mattias has slain her killer, but vengeance does not raise the dead.

         His shredded shirt reveals several ragged channels where the dead beast took a taste of him, and the woman I grow into will spend many nights tracing those scars with her fingers and considering how foolishly easy it is for young girls to fall in love with men simply because they are strong enough to slay monsters.

         The dead wolf shudders, and my younger self screams.

         But there is no wolf; not anymore. There is only a man, naked and bloody, with his skull split wide by my hero’s axe.

         Then the whole forest shudders, and the icicle ceiling of my world comes crashing down.

* * *

         I wake, trying to bring the image of Mattias’s face with me from the dream, but no matter how many times I’ve studied his smiles and his grimaces, I’m fast losing the ability to conjure his likeness from memory. Instead, I see only my oldest son, Bernhard, a near doppelgänger for his father, and young Peter grinning through a mask of blood. I shake off the memories, content to spend a few seconds of peace in the warmth of my blankets as the first orange shimmer of morning creeps into the widow, but the stillness never lasts. Gretchen calls for me, screams for me, and when I rise and run to her, I find nothing but more blood.

         The wolf returned last night.

         One barn door has been removed with terrible violence. Herr Butter lies in the doorway, his stomach split, his entrails spilled and cold. Gretchen wails and tugs at his mane as if trying to yank the life back into him. Peter has forgotten his stoicism and weeps openly, no longer the conquering hunter but a little boy with very little left to lose.

         Klara, our cow, is missing, but little investigation is required. A bloody trail leads from the barn, beyond the cedar line, and into what passes for a forest in this land. There is more blood than even I could have imagined.

* * *

         The day is not improved by the appearance of Mr. Elder, knocking at my door. I’m feeding my children and trying to keep their minds from the cleanup that awaits us when he arrives. He stands framed in the doorway, the winter sun at his back, and his horse is tied to a fencepost just beyond the slaughter. He inadvertently walked through some blood and it coats his boots; this provides a welcome excuse to deny him entry into my home.

         “What has occurred here, Frau?” he asks. “Have you been harmed?”

         I close my children safely inside the house and join Mr. Elder on the porch. He looks as if he’s swallowing back a mouth full of bile.

         “A wolf killed our animals in the night.”

         “This is not the work of a wolf,” he says. “Wolves are uncommon here.”

         “It was a wolf.”

         He shakes his head and grips his hat in his hands like he’s trying to wring water from a washcloth. “It was men who did this. Maybe you’ve seen a wolf roaming, but this atrocity has every appearance of a Comanche raid.”

         Every appearance but tracks from horses or humans, I think, but I find it better to let some men run until their steam is exhausted. They will often confuse this for agreement on my part and discontinue all efforts to persuade me.

         “We were on the trail of a raiding party last night, but they eluded us,” he says. “A dozen red bandits if there was one, we are sure. I’m sorry we weren’t able to find them before they did this to you, but you were more fortunate than you could have been. The Emerson family lost more than animals last night. Their child was murdered.”

         I don’t know who the Emerson’s are, but I feel the death of their child in my bones.

         “We’ll ride again tonight,” he says. “We’ll keep watch until they move on or they’re all dead. You’ll be safe tonight. I promise we’ll stay close.”

         I bite back black laughter. If this fool knew what he was chasing, he’d know that his promise to protect me was one he could never keep.

         “I want to say something and say it plain,” Mr. Elder says. “You and your children are alone here, and you are not safe. I would make a good husband to you if you would have me.”

         “I have a husband.” My laughter threatens to spill out, but the sight of Herr Butters growing rigid sobers me enough to keep it contained for now.

         “Your husband is dead, Frau. A man would not leave his family is such straits if he were able to return. I believe the Comanche must have killed him. And your oldest boy with him, I’m sorry to say.”

         “No, they will return.” It’s a lie, but I use it to wall myself away from his advances.

         “Maybe he will, but I think it’s unlikely.” He squashes his hat back on his head and takes hold of my arm. His hands are large, and the backs of them are thick with hair, like my husband’s hands. His grip is tighter than necessary, but I refuse to reveal any discomfort. “Consider my offer, Frau. There are worse men to align yourself with in this world.”

         Sadly, he is right, but that realization is not enough to sway me. “Thank you for checking on us.”

         “You are in my thoughts, Frau.”

         Mr. Elder avoids the wide swath of blood this time as he lumbers back to his horse. The animal is as eager to leave this place as I am to have Mr. Elder gone from my porch. Only when they disappear over the horizon do I finally feel the air rush back into my lungs.

         The laughter finally escapes, and when my children find me on my knees with my forehead pressed against the porch’s cedar planks, shoulders shaking, they can be forgiven for thinking I’ve momentarily lost my mind.

* * *

         The most difficult day we’ve spent without Mattias and Bernhard is a bleak procession of butchering and bloody cleanup, for though it would have seemed impossible to me a year ago, my family is not in a position to let any available meat go to waste. With the day drawing nearer to a merciful close, my children gaze back at me across the dinner table with expressions usually reserved for men who have survived particularly heinous wars. I am afraid that they understand the truth of things, though they won’t speak that truth aloud. I was a fool for thinking my hard decisions would keep us all safe. I should have known that blood always wills out.

         When the children are in their beds, I sit in a chair by the window, the rifle cold in my hands, and I watch as night erases the hills. I whisper a prayer for spring, for an end to the bloated February moon peeking through the clouds. For some kind of warmth. I’m tired of being cold, inside and out.

         But we must all live with our decisions, whether they are right or wrong. I think of the Emerson child and wonder whether it would still be alive if I’d stayed in Europe. Certainly, there are others who would be. But Mattias believed our lives would improve with an ocean to separate us from that ancient forest. He made the decision to come here; he convinced me. And I’d been desperate enough to believe that our problems wouldn’t follow us. Now his corpse lies alongside Bernhard’s, and neither of them are here to make any more decisions.

         Along the horizon, lanterns bob like boats on a black sea, likely Mr. Elder and his riding party making their rounds and alerting every man or animal within ten miles to their presence. I fall asleep in the chair in spite of myself, but a sudden hammering at my door throttles me awake and I can’t stifle a yelp. Mr. Elder’s voice is desperate as his fists strike wood again and again. “Open your door, Frau! I’m in mortal danger!”

         My hand lingers on the crossbar, and a thin howl freezes me in place. It rides the night like a slow creeping fog and conjures my darkest memories. It’s the sound Mattias made the first time he changed, and the sound of his death rattle. I have wondered for years if it might be the last sound I will ever hear. For a moment, I consider how the problem of the irksome Mr. Elder might solve itself if I simply take no action, but the howl draws closer and I haven’t the heart to leave him outside.

         I allow him in, and we bar the door behind us. His hat is gone, and a deep gash runs from the top of his head down one temple and across his cheek. Meat and blood reveal themselves as he speaks, and I’m not certain he understands how badly he’s been injured.

         “They’re dead, Frau. My companions. All of them!”

         “Comanche?” Even now I can’t muster sympathy for him.

         “No, a creature,” he says. “A massive wolf.”

         “Wolves are not common here.”

         He does not recognize my mockery. His back is pressed against the door as if that will keep out the night.

         Something slams against the outside of the door, and the howl transforms into a roar. Mr. Elder lurches forward as the door splinters down the middle. Peter and Gretchen emerge from the sleeping loft. Mr. Elder makes for the back window yelling for everyone to follow. It’s shuttered against the cold, and he’s trying to yank one shutter away in his terror instead of simply unlatching it. Peter and Gretchen eye him nervously like the wild animal he is. They understand what we are facing here, and I wish Mr. Elder had remained warm at home tonight. This man who would be my protector has led a monster to our doorstep.

         The door is no match for such a creature, and the wolf is on top of Mr. Elder before he can lift a hand to defend himself. The creature is the size of a small cow, and the stench of it in the tiny cabin is as fearsome as its teeth. My gorge rises and I struggle to hold the rifle steady as it barks again and again, the lever ratcheting in my hand until the gun is empty.

         Blood coats the thing’s silver fur, and I can’t tell whether I have wounded him or if the blood belongs to Mr. Elder. The wolf whips its head towards me, and I’m thankful I don’t recognize its eyes. My children are screaming, and I swear I can hear more howls outside, growing louder, and while this lone wolf will almost certainly kill us all, I don’t want to calculate our chances if he’s brought a pack with him.

         Now finished with Mr. Elder, the wolf lifts his ears, blood and saliva leaking from his open jaw. There are definitely howls coming from outside, and as I wrap my arms around my children and whisper a small prayer to my Grandmother’s god, a pair of flint-tipped arrows hiss through the open doorway and lodge themselves in the side of the wolf’s neck. It yelps, then turns away from us and roars at his unseen attackers.

         Two Comanche men step through the door, their faces painted black with red streaks on their foreheads and chins. Their buckskin shirts are beaded and bloody, and the first man screams and drives a feathered lance into the wolf’s chest. The second launches a relentless attack with a hatchet, and the wolf wilts under the weight of every blow.

         The monster is outmatched.

         The first man wrenches loose his lance, and the wolf collapses atop Mr. Elder. What remains of its life spills out around us on the cabin floor. My children clutch me from behind, and I can feel their heartbeats against my back. They have heard of wolves transforming back into men, but they have never seen it happen until now.

         There is a melting of the wolf’s skin as it slides away and becomes liquid, and what remains is only a man, middle-aged, balding with gray at his temples, naked and still. He is no one I know. Just another unfortunate who encountered my husband in the wrong season. Someone else who can trace his doom back to a blood-ravaged cabin the middle of an ancient German forest.

         The Comanche men do not seem unnerved by what they’ve seen. Their chests heave with exertion, but they are otherwise still. I’m reminded of Mr. Elder’s stories about Indian depredations – kidnappings, slayings, the taking of scalps – and I want to tell them that I never had any desire to leave my home. In my dreams my Grandmother is alive, and my husband was never bitten by that thing in the woods, and we are all happy and warm in front of a fireplace with the comfortable smell of sauerkraut and the laughter of my three children filling the air. I don’t want anything to do with this new land and given the opportunity I would leave and never return. But I cannot speak their language and they cannot speak mine, so we stare at one another for what feels like an eternity.

         Then, without a word, they leave, and I’m alone with the sound of my children’s crying and Mr. Elder’s moaning. We are all afraid to move, but I notice that one of the men left his hatchet lodged in the back of the dead man, and I can’t stand to leave it there. I crawl over to him, pull it loose, and again I feel Mr. Elder’s hand gripping my arm, not so tightly this time but just as unwelcomed.

         “Frau,” he says. “I require a doctor.”

         “No doctor,” I say.

         “Frau. Summon a doctor.”

         “You have been bitten,” I say.

         “Do you not understand me?” he asks.

         “I understand everything.”

         “Please,” he says.

         “I’m sorry, Mr. Elder,” I say, “but this is mercy.”

         I instruct my children to look away, then I strike him between the eyes with the hatchet and ensure that he never again comes calling at my door during a full moon.#

         Spring finds us alive, my family and I, and that is as much as I can ask. Sunlight warms the morning as Peter and Gretchen race together through the knee-high grass, laughing and calling after one another, momentarily children again. This cannot last, but I am learning to find joy in small moments. I sweep dust away from the porch, the boards complaining beneath the weight of my steps, forever a reminder of my responsibilities.

         Mattias and Bernhard are still buried together beneath those boards. There was a time when Mattias could control his rage, could recognize us in his wolf form and make the decision not to harm us, but that began to change. I will never forgive myself for what I had to do.

         And yet.

         The curse had to end.

         But what terrifies me is this: Mattias was bitten by a wolf. Bernhard never was. When his adolescence arrived and he began to change on schedule with his father, there was only one reasonable explanation.

         There is more than one way to share blood.

         I killed them together so at least they are not alone.

         And now I wish for childhoods that last forever. I’m terrified that Peter may have inherited more than his demeanor from his father, and that Gretchen may reach her womanhood and begin to change.

         I will do what needs to be done.

         But not today. Today is for sunshine.

         Let them be children for just a bit longer.

Copyright © 2020 Josh Rountree

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Josh Rountree’s short fiction has appeared in numerous magazines and anthologies, including Realms of Fantasy, Daily Science Fiction, and Polyphony 6. His work has received honorable mention in both The Year’s Best Fantasy & Horror and The Year’s Best Science Fiction. His most recent stories can be found in Dreamforge magazine, and the anthologies XVIII and A Punk Rock Future. A collection of his rock and roll themed short fiction, Can’t Buy Me Faded Love, was published by Wheatland Press. Reach out to him on Twitter @josh_rountree.

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FOX RED, LIFE RED, TEETH LIKE SNOW

by Devin Miller

         The snow glows in the night, full of starlight and the moon. The shawl covering Hryggda’s head and broad shoulders is the red of rough tree bark, of foxes. The moon-carpet crunches under her feet. An hour hence she made herself unseen, crept into the farm-hall, outwitted the protection of open iron scissors, and performed the ancient trade of changelings. The baby of her blood, she left with the humans, and the baby they birthed is with her now: her daughter.

         Inside her clothes, the baby breathes. There is a small patch of heat on her sternum under the baby’s mouth.

         The moon follows them home through the wood. The sky’s night-ship protects changelings, guides their path through the night. Hryggda can feel her protection, and the baby sleeps peacefully.

         The humans would have raised this baby differently. The shape of her body would have told them that she should be warlike, kinglike, head of a farm or a church. Why the sexual organs of a human should choose their life’s path, Hryggda has no idea. No troll’s life is so shaped by her body. This child will be happier as a troll; Hryggda is certain of this. Like her new baby, Hryggda is a changetroll. She too was taken in the night and brought under the moon’s protection home to her family.

         In their cave-home beside the waterfall, Hryggda’s wives lie in their bed. Sivor bore the baby who was swapped for this one, and Iarnsaxa delivered her. Hryggda imagines they are not asleep. They await the arrival of their new child. In her own way, Hryggda too bears this baby, and will deliver her into her family.

         The darkness changes. It seems to Hryggda as though the moon is no longer the only one who tracks her footsteps through the forest’s cloak of snow. She slows, listens, places her hand against the baby’s back to hold her safe.

         Not a human; there is not enough sound. Men are noisy. Trolls and animals who do not sleep at night are quiet. But she hears something. Footsteps soft in the stillness.

         “Who dogs my footsteps?” Hryggda calls, too softly to disturb the sleeping tree-hall.

         She hears breathing, and then a voice furred and toothy. “I shall not be likened to a mere dog.”

         Hryggda stops walking, and turns. She takes her hand off the baby, hoping her presence will not be noted. “The comparison was not intended,” she says.

         The wolf, the offspring of Fenrir, wears his thick winter coat. He is as tall as the shaggy fjord-horses, and his teeth gleam as white as the snow. “Where do you go in the dark-season of the hours-turning, trollwife?” he asks.

         “Home to my bed,” Hryggda says. “Do you follow me, or do our paths tend in the same direction?”

         “I follow one who follows you. I am hungry.” His grey-pink tongue lolls out. He bares his teeth.

         Hungry wolves eat pieces of the world, and the most ambitious hunters go after pieces of the heavens. Hryggda has heard it told. Wolves have been hunting the sun since her autumn waning, but she has escaped, hidden herself in a den to sleep until spring like a bear. And now, it seems, the forest’s hunters aim to eat the moon.

         “Forget your hunger,” Hryggda says. “Deer will fill your belly’s emptiness. Find one and go home to your bed. The moon guards my path tonight. She is wary, and will not let you catch her.”

         The wolf’s eyebrow twitches. One ear flicks. “The moon is a friend to trollwives,” he says, and his speculative tone makes Hryggda pause. “Careful where you walk in the dark, cave-mother.” He turns and slips away into the night. He is like a shadow, grey-black and swift. Hryggda cannot tell what direction he goes in. She returns her hand to the baby’s back, listens with her sharp troll-trained ears for the baby’s breath, and then walks on through the wood.

         The dark-season begins to wane, to approach the birth of day. The snowlight is aided by slow grey dawning. The wolf is nowhere to be seen, but Hryggda feels protective of the moon who protects her.

         The trees become familiar. Bent and leaning, stooped and shaggy like old women, each one her neighbor and friend. She can hear the river and the breaking of the falls. When she sees the grandmother stones, her contemplative change-journey mood cracks and she grows excited, eager to introduce this baby to her mothers.

         Hryggda greets the first of the grandmothers with a hand on her shoulder. This one is Gialp, a far-traveled trollwife whose distance from the cave-door is lingering evidence of her independence.

         When trolls die they become stone; they become land and lasting-wood. Some die deep in the forest and live forever under a shroud of pine needles and moss. Some die where they worked, stonily watching the passage of travelers over bridges or mountain passes. Some die peacefully at the door to their children’s homes. Generations of trollmothers mark the path down the slope to Hryggda’s cave-home. In full daylight, Hryggda and Iarnsaxa and Sivor will introduce this baby to the grandmothers. Once she is named. But for now, Hryggda only greets them, one by one as she picks her way down the falls-path.

         But the grandmothers are stone and do not breathe. She hears breathing. Not her own, not the child’s. Are her wives awake and waiting at the door?

         Hryggda turns a corner down the zigzagging cliff path. Someone steps out from between the shoulders of two hunched old grandmothers. Not Iarnsaxa or Sivor but a trollwife. Dressed in a green moss-cloak and fur-vest, with bright eyes and heavy brows and a bearded jaw. Hryggda does not recognize this troll.

         “What do you do, trollsister, here among my grandmothers?” Hryggda asks. “Have you come calling on my family?”

         The trollwife smiles and inclines her head. “Merely paying my respects to these ancestors in passing. I did not know they watched the door of a home.”

         “I thank you for your respect,” Hryggda says. She is pleased to have a visitor, infrequent as they are, but she does not want this visitor now, when it is a time for family. But she must make customary greetings, politenesses. “What a fine beard you have, trollsister. What big and crooked teeth. Your beauty is remarkable.”

         “Thank you kindly,” the trollwife says. “My speeches also to your beauty. I will not detain you in your homecoming.”

         The trollwife steps aside to let Hryggda pass. Hryggda notices as she does so that this trollwife’s body-smell is strange, unlike the growing, cold and deep-wood smell of most trolls. But Hryggda is too eager to be home to pay it mind. She walks down the path and comes to the next turning. As she rounds the bend she hears a terrible sound: a growl, a howling screech.

         Her first thought is that the wolf has come and attacked the trollwife. She turns and charges back up the path, but it is immediately clear that she is wrong.

         The trollwife has thrown off her moss-cloak and troll-guise. She is no trollwife at all. She is the wolf, and he is hungry. The moon has followed Hryggda, intent to guard her all the way to the vine-door of her stone-hollow-home. But here, day is coming and the moon is weary, and she does not expect an attack so close to home. The wolf’s snarl is loud and his mouth is red—not the fox-red of Hryggda’s shawl-hood but the life-red of a violent death.

         “Stop!” Hryggda calls. She bounds forward. But the baby wakes, jostled. She begins to cry, and Hryggda cannot defend the moon with a baby on her chest. She can only watch as the moon retreats between two of the grandmothers, as the wolf snarls, and the baby cries, and the waterfall thunders like the laughter of Thor. The weak daylight must offer some protection to the white night-ship, but not enough to defend her from the hunger of the wolf.

         “Wolf!” Hryggda cries. “You have made an enemy of trollwives.”

         But the wolf doesn’t pause, and his teeth slash, and the moon is not hidden deep enough between the two grandmothers. These old stone women cannot move to protect her. When the wolf leans back, his white teeth have dripping red on them. On the horizon Hryggda can see a rising tide of pink, the moon’s blood diluted by clouds. But she isn’t dead, only wounded.

         “Hryggda!” a voice comes, and up the path from the cave-home Iarnsaxa and Sivor come running.

         Hryggda feels relief wash through the marrow of her bones to see them. “A wolf is trying to eat the moon,” she calls before they reach her.

         “And the baby?” Sivor asks. The baby is still crying.

         “Here.” Hryggda pats her. “Only woken.”

         Iarnsaxa’s fingers brush Hryggda’s in passing. She charges up the path. She is carrying an axe, the one they use to chop wood for their fires, sharp and gleaming black. She leaps onto the wolf’s back, lands astride him like a horse. He stumbles under her weight.

         “Wolf,” Sivor calls, following, ready to help. “There are three of us, broad as boulders, supple as willows, angry as mother bears. There is only one of you, and you are hungry.”

         The wolf snarls. Iarnsaxa leans forward and brings the axe around, touching its sharp edge to the wolf’s neck. Trollwives always know where to find the life-veins. “You have tasted the moon,” Hryggda says. “That is more than enough. Let her descend to lick her wounds and rest.”

         “I will cut your throat,” Iarnsaxa says into the wolf’s fur-tufted ear, “if you do not leave here and swear never again to threaten the moon.”

         But the wolf laughs. “They call me Moongarm,” he says. His voice is hoarse and stilted by the closeness of the axe. “I am not named such for no reason. One day I will eat the moon.”

         “But it will not be today,” Hryggda responds. “Or on any day she guards a changeling’s homecoming.”

         “That I concede,” Moongarm says. “Let me go.”

         “You make a fine mount,” Iarnsaxa says. “How fast you would take me to visit my sisters and cousins.”

         “I will not play fjord-horse to a trollwoman.”

         The moon has disappeared, slipped away from between the grandmothers, limping to her rest. The sky is still pink with her blood and the sun’s coming.

         “No,” Iarnsaxa says. “Today is not the day for that. It is a day for my family. I will let you go.” She does not move the axe as she slides off the wolf’s back. It stays still at his throat as she walks around to face him. She meets his eye.

         The wolf turns to look at Hryggda. “Well met, trollmother,” he says. “Your wives are fearsome. I do not doubt your child will grow to be equally dangerous to wolves.”

         “Perhaps she will tame them as horses,” Hryggda says.

         The wolf grins crooked and bloody. “I think not.”

         Now that Iarnsaxa is off his back, the wolf sidles away from the axe. He rests a wary eye on her, and then he turns and goes, loping up the path and away.

         Silence from the trollwives. The baby, before quieted by the rhythm of voices, begins to cry again. This wakes them all, prompts them into motion like swift water cracking its thin ice-roof. Iarnsaxa and Sivor converge on Hryggda, begin unwrapping her red shawl. Iarnsaxa reaches in to touch a tuft of hair on the baby’s head.

         “Home safe,” Sivor says. “Did the exchange go well?”

         “Perfectly,” Hryggda says. “It was only the homecoming that was an adventure.”

         Sivor smiles and kisses Hryggda. Surrounded by attention, the baby’s cries trail off again.

         The morning is cold. The sun is rising. Weary, Hryggda leads the way down the path to their stone-hollow-home. With her wives at her back, there is no fear behind her, but stepping through the rustling vines that protect the doorway is a relief all the same.

         On the table, the white stone bowl sits waiting, splashed with the red of the changeblood.

         Hryggda peels the shawl away, and before the baby has time to cry she is placed into the bowl, head propped against its smooth stone side. The baby’s mouth forms a ring of surprise, her eyes wide as she looks up at her new mothers. How strange it is that this familiar emotion is so recognizable on one so small.

         All their hands reach to touch the baby, and Hryggda stands shoulder to shoulder with her wives. In turns they dip their forefingers in the changeblood and paint the symbols of the first trollwives on the baby’s breastbone. Then each of them paints her own symbol of their family on the crown of the baby’s head.

         Troll magic is not a thing of words and lightning. It is a thing of liquid connection, rivers and veins, purpose and life. Hryggda can’t help but look away from the baby to watch her wives’ faces as they wake this magic. Sivor’s face spills joy like the summer’s first elderflower wine. Iarnsaxa holds energy in the joints of her hands and the force of her smile.

         “Are we decided on her name?” Iarnsaxa asks, as she lifts the baby dripping from the changebath into the blanket in Hryggda’s arms.

         Sivor readies a clean damp cloth to wipe away the changeblood. “I think so.”

         “How can we name her anything else now?” Hryggda says, looking down at their daughter. “She has already escaped a beast of the night. Her name will be Morn.”

Copyright © 2020 Devin Miller

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Devin Miller is a queer, genderqueer cyborg and lifelong denizen of Seattle, with a love of muddy beaches to show for it. They write speculative fiction about trees, bookstores, and queer communities, and their poetry about sea creatures can be found on select King County Metro bus terminals. You can find Devin and their cat on Twitter @devzmiller.

Read more Beneath Ceaseless Skies

COVER ART

“Arvandil,” by Flavio Bolla

Flavio Bolla has been drawing since he was three years old. He first came in contact with the world of concept art in 2006. Since then, he has worked hard on the fundamentals to improve his design skills and to be able to create fascinating worlds. His work has been featured on various internet-platforms, magazines, and book covers. View more of his work online at www.flaviobolla.com.

Beneath Ceaseless Skies

ISSN: 1946-1076

Published by Firkin Press,

a 501(c)3 Non-Profit Literary Organization

Compilation Copyright © 2020 Firkin Press

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