Your first kiss. The first time you leave home. The first time you hold your child.

Your first red moon.

There are some things a person never forgets.

My first red moon was long before I ever heard that glorious first cry of my boy, Tamil. It was before I set foot beyond the confines of my little village. It was even long before I brushed lips with a my one-day husband, Orrick.

I was but fourteen and six. I thought myself a woman grown then; can you believe? In truth, I could scarcely hold the spear that was thrust into my hand — a feeling that is far too familiar now.

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“They’re coming for you, ‘Tilda. There’s nothing you can do about it now. This is the end.”

I steeled myself. “I’m strong. You’ll see. They’ve not beaten me yet.”

“Foolish girl. It takes more than strength to beat the cunning of the goblin horde. It takes a special kind of wiliness of your own. It takes guts. It takes timing. It takes planning.”

“Well then,” I said, “a good job I have a few tricks up my sleeve.”

I flipped over my ‘pit-spikes’ card and placed it in the centre of the board — right between my opponent’s goblin tokens and my clansmen tokens.

Father frowned so deeply I worried he was mad at me, but then he burst out laughing. He dropped two identical ‘pit-spikes’ cards of his own.

“Unbelievable! I had the other two the whole match; I felt sure it was impossible you’d draw the third!”

“And that’s why I always win.” I stuck my tongue out — a cheeky luxury I could afford with father, not with mother.

He tussled my hair like I was a toddler, forcing me to dodge his calloused fingers. “Because you’re a lucky devil?”

“No, because I don’t believe in impossible.”  

Father stroked his beard. It was long enough and thick enough that he could grab it like a horse’s mane. “Hmm, might be you’re wiser than me in that regard.”

“I’ve snared rabbits wiser than you,” grandmother shot at father from upon her leather-bound stool we dubbed ‘the throne’.

“You wound me mother! If you’re to compare me to a bunny, then at least let it be one that got away.” He grinned, and accompanied it with a wink that would have disarmed a less flinty soul.

“I wouldn’t dare tell a lie beneath a full moon. You, my stupid son, are a rabbit destined for the pot. After all, that woman of yours snared you good and proper, didn’t she?” Her snarl was perpetual, but grandmother managed to worm an extra slither of gum through it to show just how thoroughly their union disgusted her.

Father wore his sternest expression — the one reserved for sending my sisters and I to bed — but everyone knows grandmother is immune to blade, poison, and ‘sass’. “That woman is my wife, mother, and has been for years.  

“That woman is soft. You’re both soft. I dread the day you’re forced to wield a blade. You’ll undo my entire house.” She spat into the fire, and I swear it recoiled from her.

The discussion was over. Grandmother had declared it over, and so it was. That’s how things went around her hearth.

Grandmother skirted the round firepit and disappeared behind the heavy oak of her private room’s door. The thud of it closing sent an impassioned plume of smoke bolting for the chimney hole in the roof.

Father mimed pulling a string between his ears; it was a gesture he’d seen me and my friends use to indicate someone is brainless. I gave him a knowing smile. I didn’t have the heart to tell him that I hadn’t mimed that silly sign for years now — I can still remember how mortified he was when my sister Bianca insisted she was far too old to still answer to ‘Binky’.

I certainly didn’t have the heart to tell him I thought grandmother was right.

Growing up, the walls of our family’s home had been laden near to sagging with weapons and shields, armour and arrows. If ever the call rose then the men, women, boys and girls of Ystra Sama could be battle ready in minutes. We would even practice mustering, to ensure that every field and threshold could boast the defence of an Ystra Sama blade at a moment’s notice.

As the years passed, and the red moon failed to darken our sky, the swords and shields came down. One by one, they were replaced by father’s tools, the horses’ tack, or — and I think this irked grandmother the most — mother’s paintings.

These days our hall was a picture of pastoral bliss. Cheerful children frolicked in glades, and carefree cows wandered meadows speckled with bluebells that blossomed all year round. My sisters took after my mother, and painted their doors lilac and yellow to match the gallery walls. Those great yawning smiles of colour beamed out over the chamber where once we discussed battleplans and supped on agra — fermented goats milk so strong it stripped the tongue of taste and the spirit of fear.

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These days, we got fat around our fires, and sang childish songs of young love and endless harvests.

I am not against peace; I love peace. I love the thought that my silly, sweet sisters go to bed wrapped in wads of blankets so thick they resemble enormous pastries. I love that mother and father embrace each other out of love, not fear. I love that the goblins exist only in quaint little board games, and tales of old.

But I don’t believe it will last.

Grandmother is wise. She is the wisest person I know. She has lived and survived four red moons already. If she tells me this peace will not last, then I trust her wholeheartedly.

That is why I learn to fight.

I snuck out of bed an hour after the moon’s apex. Grandmother sleeps early these days, but she arises earlier still; it would be many hours before the complacent farmhands bothered to stir from their too-soft mattresses.   

“Hail, Sar S’mar Ystra no Ystra Sama,” I called to grandmother, using her full title.

Grandmother is properly called ‘Ystra of House Ystra, of the First Generation’, for she has lived the red moon. She has fought the goblins with her own hands. She has bled and killed for her people.

The houses are all named for first generation survivors. It is the duty of the first generation to pass their knowledge on to their children, and prepare them for the wars to come. They keep the martial traditions alive, and monitor the sky for the signs from our goddess: signs that the goblins are coming — the red moon.

By our conventions, my father is Kor S’mar Rigel no Ystra Sama — Rigel of House Ystra, of the Second Generation. I am Yar S’mar Natilda no Ystra Sama — Natilda of the third generation.

Yars are a rarity. Normally the red moon comes before the Kors are of childbearing age. We have been fortunate in that we have known a long peace. However, it is that same good fortune that makes us complacent. No peace lasts — there has never been a child of the fourth generation.

“Hail, warrior,” grandmother returned my greeting. “Do you come to seek glory on the battlefield?”

“I come in the defence of my people,” I answered correctly — a blade is not to be wielded for personal status, it is a tool to preserve our way of life.

“Hmm, I have my doubts. You play at war as if it is a game. You delight in your ‘victories’ as if they are what give you value.” She was referring to ‘Red Moon Rising’, the board game my father and I had been playing.

Grandmother began to pace. Her stride had grown ungainly in recent years. Her hips and knees no longer aligned, but she was forced to move, for I knew even this mild cold bothered her joints.

I took a knee, my blonde plait draping over my shoulder — a sun-kissed mirror of my grandmother’s recently grey queue. “I have learned the game for the sake of strategy and planning, Sar S’mar. It sharpens my mind, and helps me to think tactically. I swear this to be true.”

“And did you enjoy your victory over your father?” She raised an eyebrow akin to a puppet suspended by strings of wrinkles.

I searched my heart. “I did, grandmother. You are correct. I am sorry.”

“Mm,” she grunted. “Six laps. Plus two more for addressing a Sar S’mar informally during training.”

Grandmother had been generous. I hoped she was not also going soft. “Yes, Sar S’mar.”

Each lap circled the village. The distance was not great, but at this hour there were few torches to guide me. I had only the moon mother’s light from which to reliably pick a path. This was the true value of my ‘punishment’, I knew.

Running is good for a body, true, but a warrior’s body is honed through more rigorous exercise than this. Grandmother would have me doing push-ups, sit-ups, chin-ups, lifting pails, holding stress poses, squatting, lunging, and so much more before the night was out. Then, and only then, would I practice with sword and spear. This was how you built a warrior, she told me. This is how you make sure you have that little extra to give, even when you think your exhausted flesh has forsaken you.

The running trains the eyes, more than the body. The goblins, when they come — and they will come — will attack at night. They are subterranean creatures, who have never known the warmth and kindness of the sun. In the daytime they would be rendered blind, utterly defenceless. Come the night, however, their fist-sized eyes can pick out every hair on a poor, unsuspecting human’s head.

As I jogged, I tested my eyes on my surroundings. Our dwellings did not offer enough of a challenge for my keen young eyes. The buildings were uniformly round, with circular rooms — one added for each member of the growing family — orbiting a circular fire-hall. With their adobe walls, they glowed almost as brightly as the great moon herself.

I turned my gaze instead to the forest.

The forest was a true test for the eye. There was no anticipating what you would see. The forest was never the same; not from one day to the next, not even from one lap to the next. One could trace a yew’s branch to infinity, or lose an entire oak behind a smattering of leaves. It was a puzzle of limbs and leaves. Its depths were unknowable, its distance as near as it was far. It would be years before I could trust my eyes in that forest.

As if the moon mother were confirming my fears, I mistimed my step, landing awkwardly on the side of my ankle. The pain was immediate and fierce, shooting right up to my thigh before receding to a crescent of burning tendons that filled my boot.

A year ago, an injury like this would have made me cry out in pain, but this I bit back. That filled me with pride, even as the dread of how this would hamper my training started to swell.    

I pressed on. I shouldn’t keep grandmother waiting too long.

The last bend was slow and clumsy. I already knew the lost time would earn me some fresh punishment. With my grandmother’s ire already assured, I allowed myself to slow whilst passing the small mound that lived in the shadow of our house — a mound that had once been a goblin gate.

The goblin gates were nothing to look at it; they were simply points of soft soil, where the goblins had breached. The sight of this one, now innocently matted in a blanket of grasses and wildflowers, always stirred something in me, though. This was where my grandmother first met the goblins at the time of her first red moon. This is where she had become a first-generation clanswoman, and earned the right to name and lead her house. This was where she — younger then than I now — lost all but one of her six brothers and sisters.

The place filled me with awe and dread in equal measures. I thought of myself, standing shoulder to shoulder with a grandmother who would have been my peer then, fighting ferociously to protect our home. I could hear the clamour of metal splintering wood and our brave cries drowning out the goblins’ weedy shrieks. I could smell the blood of the pitiful devils as my blade bit into their runty bodies.

But I could also picture my sisters, with flowers of blood blossoming on their chests. Their cheeks pale and their lips open to receive the moon mother’s blessing. I saw it so clearly that tears rolled freely down my cheeks to feed the dirt beneath my feet — the dirt where my family would be laid to rest.

I bit my lip to restore myself.

I had let my resole wither beneath any number of useless emotions this night. I would have to report my juvenile, vain lapses to grandmother.

It was going to be a long night of punishments.