Kelly Barnhill

They heard the child whimper as they tramped through the trees, but the whimpering soon gave way to the swamp sighs and birdsong and the woody creaking of trees throughout the forest. And each Elder felt as sure as sure could be that the child wouldn’t live to see the morning, and that they would never hear her, never see her, never think of her again.

They thought she was gone forever.

They were wrong, of course.

“Do you think you can hide from me, you ridiculous monster?” she bellowed at the swamp. “It isn’t as though I don’t know where you are. Resurface this minute and apologize.” She pressed her expression into something closely resembling a scowl. “Or I will make you.” Though she had no real power over the monster himself—he was far too old—she certainly had the power to make that swamp cough him up as if he were nothing more than a glob of phlegm in the back of the throat. She could do it with just a flick of her left hand and a jiggle of her right knee.

She attempted to scowl again.

“I MEAN IT,” she hollered.

The thick water bubbled and swirled, and the large head of the swamp monster slurped out of the bluish-­green. He blinked one wide eye, and then the other, before rolling both toward the sky.

“Don’t you roll your eyes at me, young man,” the old woman huffed.

“Witch,” the monster murmured, his mouth still half-­submerged in the thick waters of the swamp. “I am many centuries older than you.” His wide lips blew a bubble in the algae slick. Millennia, really, he thought. But who’s counting?

“I don’t believe I like your tone.” Xan puckered her wrinkled lips into a tight rosette in the middle of her face.

The monster cleared his throat. “As the Poet famously said, dear lady: ‘I don’t give a rat’s—’ ”

“GLERK!” the Witch shouted, aghast. “Language!”

“Apologies,” Glerk said mildly, though he really didn’t mean it.

“Just give us a second, my darling. Auntie Xan is going as fast as she is able.”

And she was. Transformation is a tricky business, even for one as skilled as Xan. Her branches began to wind back into her spine, one by one, while the folds of bark were devoured, bit by bit, by the folds of her wrinkles.

Xan leaned on her staff and rolled back her shoulders a few times to release the kinks in her neck—one side and then the other. She looked down at the child, who had quieted some, and was now staring at the Witch in the same way that she had stared at the Grand Elder—with a calm, probing, unsettling gaze. It was the sort of gaze that reached into the tight strings of the soul and plucked, like the strings of a harp. It nearly took the Witch’s breath away.

“Bottle,” Xan said, trying to ignore the harmonics ringing in her bones. “You need a bottle.” And she searched her many pockets to find a bottle of goat’s milk, ready and waiting for a hungry belly.

With a flick of her ankle, Xan allowed a mushroom to enlarge itself enough to make a fine stool to sit upon. She let the child’s warm weight rest against the soft lump of her midsection and waited. The crescent moon on the child’s forehead dimmed to a pleasant shade of pink, and her dark curls framed her darker eyes. Her face shone like a jewel. She was calm and content with the milk, but her gaze still bored into Xan—like tree roots hooking into the ground. Xan grunted.

“Well,” she said. “There’s no use looking at me like that. I can’t bring you back to where you were. That’s all gone now, so you might as well forget about it. Oh hush now,” for the child began to whimper. “Don’t cry. You’ll love the place where we are going. Once I decide which city to bring you to. They are all perfectly nice. And you’ll love your new family, too. I’ll see to that.”

But there was a waterfall that the baby would like. And there was a rocky outcropping with a particularly fine view. And she noticed herself wanting to tell the baby stories. And sing her songs. And as she told and as she sang, Xan’s step grew slower and slower and slower. Xan blamed the onset of old age and the crick in her back and the fussiness of the child, but none of those things was true.

Xan found herself stopping again and again just to take yet another opportunity to unsling the baby and stare into those deep, black eyes.

Each day, Xan’s path wandered farther afield. It looped, doubled back, and wiggled. Her traverse through the forest, normally almost as straight as the Road itself, was a twisty, windy mess. At night, once the goat’s milk was exhausted, Xan gathered the gossamer threads of starlight on her fingers, and the child ate gratefully. And each mouthful of starlight deepened the darkness in the child’s gaze. Whole universes burned in those eyes—galaxies upon galaxies.

More than once, Glerk’s foot had come down hard on a cruel-­cornered wooden rattle, sending him howling with pain. He found himself shushed and needled out of the room, lest he wake the baby, or frighten the baby, or bore the baby to death with poetry.

Even when Luna was content, she still was not quiet. She hummed; she gurgled; she babbled; she screeched; she guffawed; she snorted; she yelled. She was a waterfall of sound, pouring, pouring, pouring. And she never stopped. She even babbled in her sleep.

The baby gazed as he walked, studying his protruding eyeballs, his conical ears, his thick lips on wide jaws. She examined each wart, each divot, each slimy lump on his large, flat face, a look of wonder in her eyes. She reached up one finger and stuck it curiously into a nostril. Glerk sneezed, and the child laughed.

“Glerk,” the baby said, though it was probably a hiccup or a burp. Glerk didn’t care. She said his name. She said it. His heart nearly burst in his chest.

Xan, for her part, did her best not to say, I told you so. She mostly succeeded.

Xan reached up. She didn’t look at the sky. She didn’t notice the moon.

(Did she notice how heavy the light felt on her fingers? Did she notice how sticky it was? How sweet?)

She waved her fingers above her head. She pulled her hand down when she couldn’t hold it up anymore.

(Did she notice the weight of magic swinging from her wrist? She told herself she didn’t. She said it over and over and over until it felt true.)

And the baby ate. And ate. And ate. And suddenly she shuddered and buckled in Xan’s arms. And she cried out—once. And very loud. And then she gave a contented sigh, falling instantly asleep, pressing herself into the softness of the Witch’s belly.

Xan looked up at the sky, feeling the light of the moon falling across her face. “Oh dear me,” she whispered. The moon had grown full without her noticing. And powerfully magic. One sip would have done it, and the baby had had—well. More than one sip.

Greedy little thing.

Glerk did not approve, and said so the first day the baby arrived.

And he said so again, on the next day.

And the next.

And the next.

Xan refused to listen.

“Babies, babies, babies,” sang Fyrian. He was utterly delighted. The tiny dragon perched on the branch extending over the door of Xan’s tree home, opening his multicolored wings as wide as he could and arching his long neck toward the sky. His voice was loud, warbled, and atrociously off-­key. Glerk covered his ears. “Babies, babies, babies, BABIES!” Fyrian continued. “Oh, how I love babies!” He had never met a baby before, at least not that he could remember, but that did not stop the dragon from loving them all to bits.

Glerk moved closer, leaned his head near the baby, and gave her a skeptical expression. The baby had her fist in her mouth, leaking drool through the fingers. She waved her other hand at the monster. Her pink lips spread outward into a wide smile around her wet knuckles.

She is doing that on purpose, he thought as he tried to force his own smile away from his wide, damp jaws. She is being adorable as some sort of hideous ruse, to spite me. What a mean baby!

Luna gave a giggly squeal and kicked her tiny feet. Her eyes caught the swamp monster’s eyes, and they sparkled like stars.

Do not fall in love with that baby, he ordered himself. He tried to be stern.