Waning Crescent
Lendra winced with each step through the misty morning on her way to the healer’s cottage. Villagers marked her passing with solemn nods while children whispered and pointed when they didn’t simply stare. She kept her eyes down, ignoring the attention and trying not to think about the reason for it.
She had tried to give Matlin the slip by leaving home through the back door, but he caught up to her near the blacksmith’s. She was secretly glad for the distraction. The forge smoke stung her nostrils. Perhaps the blacksmith was burning rotten wood. Lendra scrubbed her nose as if the odor were a bothersome fly.
“You look terrible,” she said, not much for greetings on even her best days. “Told you not to sleep on the front stoop.”
Matlin’s straw-colored hair usually looked like a bird’s nest, but that morning it was a nest that had long been abandoned and ravaged by the elements. Like her, he carried dark bags beneath his cerulean eyes. Neither of them had slept well, but Lendra had the added burden of grief. Matlin’s broad shoulders would have been there for her to cry on if she’d invited him inside. They’d shared a bed and bath often enough as children and still shared every secret with the other, trading them back and forth like bite’s of each other’s food, but she’d never been a burden and didn’t want to start now.
“I couldn’t sleep.” Matlin hesitated, stepping out of her reach before he said, “Don’t be mad. I actually snuck inside and stood watch in the front room.”
“Creep,” she said and lazily kicked a pebble in his direction. He’d been wise to move away; otherwise she definitely would have punched his arm.
“You were crying out all night,” he said, drawing close once more and speaking in a hush.
“I dreamed about them,” she said, not bothering to lower her own voice. Everyone knew what had happened. You couldn’t hide much in a village as small as theirs.
“You don’t have to talk about it.”
“You know I’m stronger than that.” Lendra’s stomach heaved, contradicting her. Had the entire town fallen apart while she slept? Hollow Pine smelled overwhelmingly of body odor and refuse as well as several other unsavory scents. Lendra could have pointed with her eyes closed to each villager who hadn’t bathed in at least a fortnight. She grimaced and hoped Matlin would mistake it for a flair of pain.
“I was back in the forest, lying on a bed of moss,” she said. “I wasn’t sure whether I was awake or asleep. It felt beyond real, everything sharp in a way I’d never experienced. The full moon was huge, radiant, bathing everything in comforting light. The leaves glowed, and the trees seemed to dance. Mom and Dad vanished into the woods…not walking but…kind of floating backwards. I could smell Mom’s lavender soap and the spinach salad Dad had eaten for breakfast.”
They reached the town center, a dusty crossroads with a double-story building on each corner–the only ones in town of even that insignificant height. Two bars, an inn, and a general store blocked the morning sun, quietly awaiting a rush of clientele that would never come. A few townsfolk offered greetings, which Matlin returned in a husky voice while Lendra silently veered to the right, keeping well to the shadows.
“I called out to them,” she said, continuing her story, “but they were already gone, stolen by the forest’s deeper shadows. Consumed by what lay within.”
Equal parts rage and pain welled up with the words like oil floating to the surface of water. The wounds on her back itched, and she suddenly wanted nothing more than to race back home, rub her back against the wall, and cry herself hoarse.
“I wanted to go after them,” she said, swallowing her feelings with only the slightest hitch in her voice. “But I sensed a presence in the woods. If it weren’t for my weakness, I could have followed. Maybe I could have saved them.”
“There was nothing you could have done in the dream or in reality,” Matlin said, wrapping her in a gentle one-armed embrace, careful of the wounds on her back.
She hated the matter-of-fact way he passed sentence upon her dead parents. There was plenty she could have done. Regardless, wincing only a little, she reached for his hand on her shoulder and slid her fingers between his.
“I’m not supposed to say anything,” he said, hesitating and looking as if he might step away. She tightened her grip on his hand, locking him in place. “We’ve been organizing a hunting party.”
“We? Meaning you’re going to join them?” Lendra asked. Any thoughts of keeping her voice low fled her mind like a startled rabbit. “What happens if you die too?”
“We have to do something.”
“Unmaker-touched idiot,” she hissed. With all the strength she could muster, Lendra tossed his hand from her shoulder. “It was a bear. Not a monster. It had every right to be in the forest. If anything, we were the fools who ventured too far from town. Because I…I…”
The tears she always fought these days wriggled through the gaps in her defenses like werecats into even the most secure bank vaults. She nearly collapsed against the nearest wall while Matlin shielded her from prying eyes with his body. Once again, he placed a comforting hand on her shoulder and leaned in close until their foreheads were kissing.
“You wanted to have a picnic,” Matlin finished for her. “Something you’d done a hundred times. Something we used to do.” He spoke slowly, easing the words between her tears. “We had tea parties by the brook while grocklin skittered overhead. They used to steal the puff pastries we brought.”
“Hurgh,” she said, a single disbelieving laugh escaping between short gulping breaths. It broke grief’s spell over her, and she quickly wiped the last of her tears, focusing on the warm memory Matlin had laid over her like a warm blanket on an unexpectedly chilly night. “You always blamed the grocklins, but we both know you ate those pastries.”
“Grocklins steal everything else,” Matlin said. He held out a hand and pulled her upright when she took it. “Why’s it so hard to believe they took those pastries?”
“Because I know you,” she said, poking his stomach as they continued on their way. “And I know you aren’t a hunter. What if something happened to you? Don’t you realize that with my parents gone, you’re all that I’ve got?”
“I’ll be careful,” he said, tapping his heart three times with three fingers. The gesture might have been simple, but the weight it carried wasn’t. “At the first sign of anything I can’t handle, I’ll run back to the village.”
“You’d better hope no squirrels or rabbits cross your path,” she said beneath her breath. If Matlin heard, he gave no sign.
###
Smiley’s home was large and sturdy, brick to keep his patients cool in the summer and warm in the winter. Despite its opulence, the healer lived modestly, devoting all his time to caring for the villagers’ health. An herb garden surrounded the property, filling every bit of space within his wooden fence. She welcomed the sweet aroma of rosemary which drowned out all the other awful smells she had endured during the short walk there.
Matlin said he would wait outside the healer’s for her, but Lendra promised to meet him afterwards at Reshi’s bakery. With a quick wave and hollered greeting for Smiley, he jogged away. Lendra regretted telling him to wait at the bakery. It was the only surefire way to escape him for a time, but she absently worried about how many baked goods he would wolf down before she could pull him away.
“Your wounds are healing nicely,” Smiley said. He easily pulled off her bandages, most of the adhesive barely hanging on after a restless night of tossing and turning.
They stood together behind the curtain he used for private examinations. When she’d stumbled into the village, bleeding and battered, Lendra had been numb to Smiley’s treatment. In shock–that’s what he’d told her later, though she still didn’t quite understand what that meant. Rather, it seemed too timid an expression for the overwhelming loss she’d felt, as if he’d called a hurricane a light misting.
A few days later, she’d felt so vulnerable and raw, standing shirtless in the healer’s home. Now, it had become a matter of course–just another thing to be endured. They were adding up–life’s burdens, and she didn’t think she had the strength to carry much more.
“There’s no sign of infection. Actually...” he paused, and she held her breath, expecting bad news, “I don’t think I’ve ever seen wounds healing so fast.”
“Maybe they weren’t as deep as you thought,” she suggested, only half listening.
Lendra stared at a wall of book spines, thinking how she was becoming one of those cracked and worn bindings. The coming summer would be her sixteenth, and as evidenced by the various stings as Smiley applied salves to her back, she would be more scarred than a veteran soldier. Everyone told her she was lucky to be alive, but it was impossible to feel anything but pain and flashes of anger.
The world was an unforgiving place. Lendra decided to turn the tables on the world. She would never forgive it.
“Have you read all these books?” she asked.
“Most,” he said, voice coming from further to the side as he retrieved the foul smelling ointment he applied to her back each morning. Sharp as the odor might have been, it was still better than the poultices he’d used in the beginning. “There are a few I skim now and then when a particularly troublesome ailment presents itself.”
“Would you mind if I borrowed one?” she asked, and silently prayed to the Maker that he wouldn’t ask too many questions about the one she had in mind.
“You’d find them terribly boring,” Smiley said.
He dabbed the ointment in places and smeared it in others, exceedingly gentle. As he did so, Lendra realized that the wounds hadn’t hurt all morning. They mostly itched–a good sign when it came to healing.
“Unless you’re thinking of taking up the healer’s arts,” he continued. “You might have the knack for it, what with all the riddles you’re always solving. An injury or disease is like a puzzle to be solved. Except, I’m not sure healing is your gift. I’ve had more than a few visitors over the years who needed salves for bruises and broken noses they received courtesy of you.”
“And don’t forget that most of them were boys, bullies, and several years older than me,” she said.
Smiley had a gift for healing the body, but didn’t he understand how much guilt she already felt? Now he was dredging up ancient history and making her angrier with each word. But the anger felt good. Felt right. And it scared Lendra. Even when she’d sucker-punched the occasional boy, she hadn’t been angry at them.
“I don’t enjoy hurting people,” she said, becoming a sullen child explaining herself to one of the few authority figures in town. “It’s just, well, sometimes it seems the only way they learn.”
“Most of them suffered more from wounded pride than any serious physical damage,” Smiley said. When she heard the now-familiar rustle of a bandage (really nothing more than some clean cloth), Lendra knew what his next words would be before he said them. “This might hurt,” he said out loud while Lendra mouthed along. It didn’t hurt, and he finished applying it quickly. “You can pull your shirt back down. Stop by tomorrow. I’ll change the bandages one more time, but at the rate you’re healing, my work feels nearly done.”
Outside, Lendra savored the rosemary with a deep breath, then she crept through town, breathing through her mouth but still catching hints of foul odors. Until she smelled the bakery. She could have followed the aroma of freshly baked bread and sweet jams through a maze with her eyes closed.
Inside, Matlin was sucking remnants of powdered sugar from a finger, his cheeks puffed with a sweet roll he must have eaten in a single bite. She had seen him do it before.
If you encounter this story on Amazon, note that it's taken without permission from the author. Report it.
The shop was packed, and Lendra once again regretted agreeing to meet there. She ignored the furtive glances from other customers, who quickly found what they were searching for whenever she met their eyes. The first few days after her parents’ death, while she had been recovering, she had wallowed in self pity. But today she was a simmering pot, ready to reach a full boil any second.
When Reshi saw her, the pudgy woman bouldered her way through the shop with apologies. Every customer and surface she passed was dusted with flour from her hands and apron.
“Tis good to see you up and about, Len,” she said. “If you stick around, I’ll have time to chat later.”
“I came to meet Matlin and hopefully keep him from eating himself to death.” Lendra spoke loud enough to be sure he would hear, but with his mouth full, he couldn’t offer a rebuttal.
“Well, I’ll stop by the house later,” Reshi said, filling a basket with several different muffins and tarts. “Some of us are going to hold a service for your parents, but I’d like to talk with you about it first.”
“There’s nothing to bury,” Lendra said sharply. Lowering her voice, she added, “I don’t want any part of it.”
“I’d like to say a few words about them, nonetheless,” Reshi said. Like Smiley, the baker was one of the few adults she couldn’t argue with. “It’s important to say goodbye properly.” She punctuated the statement by pushing the basket into Lendra’s arms, tutting even as the younger woman opened her mouth to protest. “I’ll not have you wasting away with grief. When you finish these, come back for more. Mourning is no time to be worried about your figure, and you deserve to indulge. Remember that you’re alive. It’ll take time for the guilt to pass, but it will. And a little sugar won’t hurt.”
The baker hustled away, leaving a cloud of flour in her wake. Lendra looked into the basket and couldn’t help smiling. Among other treats, it was heaped with lemon cookies–her favorite.
“Let’s get out of here.” She grabbed Matlin by the arm and dragged him from the shop while he croaked out a goodbye, spewing puffs of sugar with each unintelligible word. Rather than release him once they were outside, she pulled him down the street toward the butcher’s shop.
Her steps faltered briefly when she saw the bard, Es’meral, tucked into the shadows beneath a large tree across the street. Despite the dark cloaking her, the bard’s red hair burned like a low fire, and the woman’s eyes seemed to glow like molten gold. She strummed a lazy tune on her lute, clear to Lendra’s ears despite the distance. It felt eerily familiar even though she hadn’t yet heard the bard perform. But in passing, she’d admired Es’meral’s long slender fingers as they plucked the instrument’s strings and had welcomed the distraction provided by daydreams of those fingers playing across her body.
Noticing Lendra’s attention, the bard looked directly at her and smiled. That startled her back into motion. With a glance over at Matlin, who was still chewing his pastry but looking to her full basket with greedy attention, she swung it to her other side and took off, trusting him to follow.
He would, for a chance to grab her pastries, if for nothing else.
The butcher’s shop sat on the edge of town in the opposite direction from Smiley’s. The dirt road led out of town, cutting into the forest where it quickly diminished into nothing more than a pair of cart tracks over rough ground. Lendra tried not to think about where that path led.
“Hey,” Matlin said, sensing her thoughts. “You okay?”
“Not really,” Lendra said. She’d avoided this part of town since the bear attack. Even now, she listened for the slightest rustle of underbrush and searched the trees for any sign of the mountainous beast which had killed her parents.
“You got your appetite back?” he asked, nodding his head toward the butcher’s shop. He wasn’t changing the subject to avoid talking about her feelings. Matlin knew she’d have said more if there were any more to say.
“Actually, I feel like I’m starving,” Lendra said.
“That’s a good sign,” Matlin said. “What did Smiley say?”
She told him while her stomach twisted into knots, the coppery smell of raw meat drawing her toward the butcher’s shop. A few wisps crossed their path, flying low and teleporting every few wing beats. Lendra swatted the air, though they had already passed, their multi-colored lights dim as the sun rose toward noon.
One of the butcher’s sons, Kelt, was prying open a barrel of pickled meat outside the shop. He greeted them in a matter-of-fact manner, grunting each of their names as he wiped sweat from his brow with the back of his hand.
“What do you have that’s fresh?” Lendra asked, not pausing to hear the answer as she pushed into the shop.
“Got some deer the Reach brothers brought in early this morning,” Kelt said, the words following her like a stray cat looking for a hand out. “And I’m opening some pickled pork hocks.”
He must have opened a crack in the tightly sealed lid as he said it because suddenly, Lendra could smell the salty meat. “I’ll take a jar,” she called behind her, angling her head slightly in that direction but keeping her eyes fixed straight ahead.
Grist bent over the shop counter, the aforementioned deer already skinned and laid out on the counter like a sculptor’s block of stone. One hand sliding along its flank, the butcher used the slender knife in his other to remove shiny chunks of fat with long steady cuts. While he didn’t light the same fire in her chest as the bard, Grist was no less skilled and no less of an artist.
Her belly growled as loudly as the meanest wolf. Matlin cocked an eyebrow at her, stepping into her field of vision to be sure she noticed. On the other hand, Grist laughed, looking up at them after he finished his cut.
“That’s what I like to hear,” he said. With an absent flick, he tossed the fat into a bucket behind the counter. It landed with a satisfying smack.
Grist wore a black shirt, sleeves rolled high up on his arms which were corded with tight muscles. In stories, innkeepers were fat while blacksmiths and butchers always had bodies bulging with muscle, but in Hollow Pine, the citizens lived a bit harder than most places in the Radiance. Only Reshi and her family had any real weight to them, as round as the rolls they sold.
“I’ve already promised a lot of this meat to the inn and a few families, but I can send you home with a fair bit of knuckle, rump, and tenderloin.” Grist smacked the deer’s flank as he favored her with a lopsided grin. Without waiting for a response, he twirled the knife in his hand, dancing it through his fingers before setting it down on the counter.
Lendra’s earlier comparison of the butcher to an artist only intensified as she surveyed his tools. A half dozen knives glittered in the shop’s wisplights. Grist had more sharp tools than anyone else in the village, and she couldn’t have guessed half of their purposes. Her parents had been potters, which meant she was also one by extension, which seemed as far removed from a butcher’s trade as anything besides maybe healing. Then again, meat nourished the body.
Lendra should have considered herself an artist like anyone else. With her parents gone, she was now the only one in the village who knew how to use a throwing stick or trimming tools.
Except she’d never been any good at pottery. Definitely not good enough to earn a living at it outside the village. She could make serviceable goods that the villagers would pay for and use without any problems or complaints. But her creations lacked the soul she’d always seen in her parents’ work and in the craft of seemingly everyone else in Hollow Pine.
“I’ll take it all,” she said. Setting the basket on a nearby table amongst jars of pickled eggs and meat, she quickly dipped a hand into her coin purse. She knew what Grist would say, could already see his hand rising in protest. If Lendra could get the money out and on the counter before he spoke…
“Can’t let you pay,” he said.
When she opened her mouth to interject, finally drawing her hand from the pouch with a suitable weight of coin, he pointed a knife at her, this one square and rectangular. More of an axe than a knife, really, but he held it out like an accusatory finger.
“What you’re suffering is a terrible thing,” Grist said. “And there’s little I can do besides giving you a bit of free meat. Which is exactly what I plan to do, with or without your permission. And no trying to leave money somewhere anonymously after the fact. You’re clever, far too clever in some ways, but you’re forgetting something.”
He still held the cleaver out before him, not even the slightest tremble in his arm. Before he spoke again, Grist bought it down with a crunch into the deer’s leg joint. With each sentence that followed, he worked the knife like a teacher smacking a ruler against the closest hard surface, demanding her attention with meaty thwacks.
“I grew up with your parents. Courted Mia for a short time when we were teenagers. Was best friends with Jark until we each started our own families and drifted a ways apart. Everyone in the village has a similar story.”
Lendra winced when each of her parents’ names were spoken aloud as if they were sacred titles to only be spoken with reverence and longing.
Pausing at his work, Grist fixed her with a hard stare designed to reprimand–to hold her attention as his lesson sank in, but there was enough pity in it, a moisture to his eyes, that his final words broke her apart as efficiently as the carcass on his table.
“We were all connected to your parents,” he said. “We’re all mourning their loss.”
Thoroughly shamed, Lendra nearly ran from the butcher’s shop, not hearing whatever Matlin called out to her. No one in the village had seen her cry since her parents’ death, except Matlin, and she wouldn’t allow them the chance now. Everything seemed entirely out of her control. That one thing would yield to her wishes.
Small success though it might have been, she breached the front door of her house and slammed it as the first tears streaked down her dirt-dusted face.
“Unmaker-touched bully,” she sobbed.
Lendra knocked into the kitchen table, unable to slow down but hardly felt the pain in her hip. With a shove, she sent the table skittering across the floor, too angry and hurt to notice exactly how far the heavy piece of furniture traveled. It nearly crashed into the far wall. The violence felt good, but she refrained from making a lap around the house to kick and throw every loose article or obstruction.
Like a tree whose trunk collapses after a final axe stroke, she fell onto her bed. Time slipped away alongside all her restraint, and she allowed herself time alone to scream every pain and injustice into her pillow.
“I’m coming in,” Matlin called from far away, probably announcing his arrival from the entrance. His voice echoed around the empty house’s front room, and she looked for something to throw at him should he breach the sanctity of her bedroom.
“You really are a clever idiot,” he said, voice near, but when she hefted the tear-soaked pillow, relishing the thought of it smacking him in the face, she couldn’t see him through her open door.
Honest, reliable Matlin. He stood outside her bedroom, leaning against the wall. Near but out of sight, affording her privacy. When had he become so thoughtful? That wasn’t the right question, and Lendra knew it. Why had it taken her so long to notice that her best friend was all grown up? She didn’t deserve him.
“Grist was trying to tell you that we’re all family. Everyone in the village.
We’re all grieving your parents. You the most, but beyond that, well, it’s not a competition.”
Had Matlin’s voice hitched at the end or had she imagined it? Before she could decide, he continued.
“Even though you lost your parents, you still have the rest of the village–a whole slew of aunts, uncles, grandparents, and rowdy cousins. And you’ve got me. A brother, no matter what anyone else says. Now, always, forever. In fact, why don’t we make it official.”
“What do you mean?” she asked, rising up to a seated position, legs drawn up to her chest.
“Like the hobs,” Matlin said, after a pause. Maybe he was considering what he meant, but Lendra thought it more likely he was waiting to be sure she was listening. “We need an adjective to share before our names.”
“Hollow,” she said immediately, “from the town. HollowLendra fits exactly how I feel.”
“But that’ll pass,” he said. “We can do better than that.”
Silence fell heavy on the house like the great snowfall last year which had half buried the front door. They’d been forced to crawl out through a window, laughing when her dad fell into the snow face first. He’d been nothing more than a pair of legs kicking in the air until Lendra and her mom pulled him out.
“Unbreakable,” he said, a note of triumph in his voice.
“That’s a bit of a mouthful,” she said, sticking out her tongue for emphasis before remembering Matlin couldn’t see her. “UnbreakableLendra.”
“So I’ll call you ‘ul,’ and you can call me ‘um…’”
Lendra barked a half-hearted laugh, more ridicule than anything resembling joy. “Maybe if it didn’t sound so ridiculous.”
“U…M and U...L then,” he said, pronouncing each letter.
She liked it. There was a certain fluidity to the shortened name, and only the pair of them would know the true meaning.
“I know it’s silly, but think about it,” Matlin said, knocking against the wall. “In the meantime, I’ve gotta go home and do some of my chores, but I brought the meat Grist promised you. I think he threw in a little extra because he felt bad.” A few heavy footfalls sounded as he started to leave but stopped abruptly. “Also, I stopped by Whirl’s on the way here for a few carrots and onions, in case you’re in the mood for a stew. Mom’ll have some potatoes, so I’ll bring a few of those by later.”
The footfalls resumed, followed by a heavy grinding as he pulled the table back into place without a word. Lendra scrubbed at her eyes, and was about to tell him not to mind the table, but all of a sudden, her stomach roiled. She could smell the meat, its iron like a magnet pulling her into the other room.
Lendra found the meat on the table, now back in its original position. Without thinking about what she was doing, she unwrapped the deer and shoved a piece into her mouth. The flesh was tough and wouldn’t yield to her teeth at first, but she quickly adjusted, ripping it apart with her canines and swallowing meaty chunks with ease. As she bit and chomped, savory juices and blood trickled into her mouth, a fresh burst with each chew as if its heart still beat somewhere.
What she wouldn’t give to feast on that heart! The thought should have given her pause, but at the moment, it felt like the most natural part of herself.
All too soon, the wrapper lay empty on the table. Lendra licked blood from her fingers, enjoying the sensation of being full for the first time since her parents had died. When her fingers were thoroughly clean, she turned her attention to the discarded wrapper, carefully angling the paper so her tongue could methodically lick it clean as well.
With that done, she climbed back into bed, burrowing beneath her blankets and shutting out the world for a time.