Lady Moon's Arc

Chapter 1 of 1

Lady Moon had walked the ridge road for forty years without a face to hate. She knew she had been killed. She knew a hand had closed around her throat and a voice she trusted had spoken her real name aside like a coin dropped in a well. But the face above the hand was smoke. Every night she drifted past the living and searched their mouths for the shape of her killer, and every night she passed him unknowing, because she could not remember what he looked like. Tonight she climbed to the broken castle on the hill. The towers leaned. Ivy split the stone. She had come because a rumor moved through the dead that two sisters kept a mirror here that showed the last thing a murdered soul saw. She did not know if the rumor was true. She knew she was tired of drifting. Inside the courtyard, a patch of pale flowers grew where no flowers should. They turned toward her as she passed. Small wisps lifted from the petals and followed at her heel like curious children. She let them come. The dead knew the dead. At the center of the courtyard, a small figure sat on a fallen block. White hair, black robe, blue eyes fixed on the sky. One hand was raised, fingers curled as if gripping something no one else could see. The moon above her shivered when she flexed her wrist. "You hold it up," Lady Moon said. "I hold it up." "I was told there is a mirror here." "There is." "Will it show me his face?" The girl looked at her for the first time. "It shows what you saw last. Do you want it?" "Yes." "The cost is your name." Lady Moon laughed, and the sound scraped. "Someone already took my name." "Then you have nothing to lose." The girl lowered her free hand. A slab of black glass rose from the courtyard stones between them. "Look." Lady Moon looked. The glass showed a kitchen. Her own hands on a table. A man across from her, pouring water into a cup she had set out for him. He was smiling. She knew the smile before she knew the face. She knew the crooked front tooth. She knew the small scar under his jaw where a dog had bitten him when he was nine. She had bandaged it herself. Her brother. Her brother had killed her. The glass sank back into the stone. Lady Moon did not move. "You know him now," the girl said. "I know him." "He is still living." "Where." The girl pointed down the hill, past the ivy, past the pale flowers, to a thin line of chimney smoke rising from the valley. "Go," she said. "Before you forget again." Lady Moon went.