Luna's Arc

Chapter 1 of 1

Luna cried into the black water, and three frogs floated up dead. She counted them without surprise. Frogs always died where her tears fell. Something in the swamp answered her weeping, and she meant to find it and bind it before it killed anything else. That was why she sat here each night, whispering to the reeds, listening for whatever came. But tonight the dead frogs lay wrong. Four of them rested on dry ground, far from any tear she had shed. Luna had not wept there. She had not even stood there. Her rule had broken. If the spirit killed where she did not cry, she could not track it. She could not bind what she could not find. She followed the dead frogs like a trail. One lay near a rotting log. Another rested on a stone. Each pointed deeper into the reeds, away from her weeping ground. Her bare feet sank in cold mud. Her wet hair clung to her neck. Whatever left these was leading her somewhere. A cricket sat on the last frog. Its eyes were dull and lifeless, mud-colored, staring at nothing. It did not jump when she knelt. It did not move at all. Luna reached for it, and her fingers passed through cold air. The cricket was not truly there. It was the shape the spirit wore to walk without her tears. Then she saw the thing that made the cricket. It rose from the water on long thin legs. Its body was slick and dark. Its head had no face, no eyes, no mouth, just smooth pale bone that turned toward her. Water dripped from its clawed hands. It had been near her all along, feeding on the small lives around her grief. Luna's breath caught, but she did not run. She had waited too long for this. To bind a spirit she needed its true name, and a name lived in what a thing wanted. She whispered, "You drink my sadness. You take the frogs to keep it flowing." The faceless thing stepped closer. Its claws reached for her. Luna did the one thing it could not feed on. She stopped crying. She wiped her wet face with her muddy hand and held her grief still inside her chest. The spirit froze, starving. "You need my tears," she whispered. "So I keep them." The faceless lurker shuddered. The dry frogs sank back into the mud. The dead cricket faded. Luna pressed her hand flat against the creature's cold chest and spoke the binding her grandmother had taught her. The spirit thinned, then folded into her palm like smoke. It was bound now. But Luna felt it pulling, hungry, straining against her hold. It would not stay quiet long. And she understood the cost at last. To keep it caged, she could never weep again.