Story – Draw Down the Moon
She breathed in the night, unseen and buried deep as the developing evening mist began to curl about the tops of the highest trees, the air beneath cooling slowly as the sun began to set. Even from deep within the earth, She could feel the fervent and insistent powers of Night and of Moon and of Man stirring. And She sighed in Her slumber, rolling gently like an undulating wave in Her cramped home. Would She be called? Would She be called to rise? At last? The night came onwards, inevitable and profound, and She continued to dream…
Cassandra licked her fingers and dipped them into the honeyed mead in the glass pitcher again, barely avoiding being swatted at by her mother’s chubby hand.
“Leave that till later, child!” said the surly woman.
Cassie smiled and dashed away, running down the halls of the stately Roman mansion. She felt suddenly free tonight, free and wild as her half-braided hair flew behind her.
Tonight was to be her first Moon ceremony. She’d only previously viewed them from the base of her family’s ‘henge hill’, as a young girl in white robes watching with the other children. But now, this year, she was old enough to witness it all. This would be her first true ceremony since she had become a woman and suffered the rites of passage. Her moonflow had come a handful of winters ago, and she had been told by her mother that she could wear make-up if she wished, as well as the slightly shorter skirts that showed off her bare ankles and sandaled feet. She could put the rouge paint purchased from the traveling merchants on her lips and cheeks, mark her eyes boldly with finely tipped charcoal pencils, and use blue tint on her forehead to outline the fresh tattoo of a crescent moon done there in tattooed woad. She could even leave her pale, blonde hair partially unbraided, the sign of a young woman not yet betrothed or wed. As a little girl, she’d had her wild locks braided every day, and once she was someone’s wife, she would need to keep her hair braided again, the long and loose tresses a treasure only for her future husband’s eyes.
Cassandra had become a woman of marriageable age and was now a highly regarded member of the family’s secretive tribe. They worshipped the gods of the Old Times instead of the God of the new churches springing up everywhere. Tonight, all her people would all gather on the henge hill, children at the base, adults at the top, to draw down the power of the Moon to join with the power of the Earth in a ceremony Cassandra’s family had been keeping alive for centuries, for as long as oral family history could remember.
Finding her way back to her family’s kitchen and peering around the corner of a thick clay wall, she waited for just the right moment to pounce once more on that oh-so-delicious honeyed mead!
The setting sun was a sign of relief to the high-saddled man. He would have to rest soon, there was no more question about it. He could feel his mount’s shaking legs growing more weary with each laboured step. But then suddenly, on the early evening wind, there came the scent of cooking meat. The road they were traveling on was surely bringing them to an inn or tavern or some farmstead. A place with food!
He hoped they would be generous. Otherwise, he’d have to kill them.
The man hadn’t eaten in two days. His warhorse needed watering and rest. And his own wounds, covered over with a thick scabbing of dark, dried blood, needed washing and maybe even proper bandaging.
The bulky form of the warrior, already hunched with exhaustion over the muscular horse’s neck, leaned forward slightly. With an un-gloved hand, he patted the side of the beast’s great, heaving neck comfortingly.
“There, now, Reordenne,” he spoke, whispering the horse’s gallant name. “You can smell it, can’t you? We’re almost there. Then we can rest, but only for the night.”
The horse whinnied and seemed to understand, and its feet moved just that much quicker as the two traveled down the road.
Just around this last bend, the man in the saddle thought to himself.
Then we’ll surely be able to rest.
The golden-glowing sun had set at last, and the earth and land all around was cooling slowly. A thick mist of white had fallen to the moss-laden bases of the ancient oak trees. In Her lucid dreams, She wondered if those trees remembered Her, knew Her. Loved or hated Her.
She could feel two-legged feet as well as four walking above Her hidden head, and She purred with curiosity, the rumbling noise almost audible in the oncoming quietude of the wind-less darkness. They were going to call Her, She knew. She could feel their prayer-filled thoughts, see into their excited hearts. She smiled to Herself, Her eyes still closed. But no longer did She writhe and squirm. Resting, still as stone, She instead waited most patiently for them to call.
“Mama, Mama! A man is coming!”
Cassandra looked up when her third youngest brother called out, her green eyes squinting as she looked down the road that ran just outside their family’s property.
The wide-eyed boy was right. A strange man was coming on a huge and plodding warhorse that looked like it had run through the fires of Hades and back before finally finding its way to their gates.
“Cassandra! Go bid him welcome, I can’t take time right now!” their mother said in exasperation.
“But Mama!,” Cassandra objected, “he could be the enemy! How will I know?”
“You’ll know, child. Now go bid him welcome and give him the proper treatment of a guest. You know the rules. I have to finish here!”
As her mother threw her hands up in frustrated dismissal and turned back to the kitchen, fussing with the elder cook over seasonings for the several lambs that were roasting on a double spit, poor Cassandra found herself torn.
She was a lady of the household now, and no longer allowed to act like a child. It was her duty to offer this stranger the proper hospitalities of her family’s meagre estate. But the child in her, only so recently squelched, was afraid and rebelling. The man seemed so weary, even as he loomed from high up on his horse, seeming taller and taller as the steed drew him closer and closer. He was clearly a fighter sort, with some chainmail armor on his form and other pieces hanging from his saddle. She couldn’t tell at this distance from whence he hailed. He flew no banner, bore no crest on his clothing or the armor of his great horse that she could see. He could be from anywhere!
I am not a child, Cassie scolded herself, at last pulling her loose skirt up in one hand and hurrying through the courtyard to the man’s horse as he guided it through the open gates and towards the main house.
I will do as I am told, and I will grant him whatever he requires, just like any of my cousins would in my place.
But she gulped as she paused at the horse’s massive head to take the side of its bridle, feeling its quick and hot, huffing breath against the bare side of her neck when she turned to look for more help from the house. She glanced up at the stranger sitting on the horse’s back, and suddenly put the back of her hand over her mouth to cover a startled gasp.
War, Death, Famine, Plague. All these horrors seemed to look back at her from his steely gaze, and Cassandra was frozen to the spot, breathless, immobile. Paralyzed.
Inwardly, the warrior sighed a very tired and fatigued sigh. The girl was going to scream, he could tell she was fighting a full-on genuine scream. That’s all he needed right now, to have some fool girl-child screaming her head off and causing a ruckus. Drawing the unnecessary attention of who knew who else? And where were the men folk?
If Reordenne was startled by that as-yet-not-unleashed scream, the great beast might find just enough energy left in his boulder-sized heart to lift up his front hooves and dash the girl’s brains out. It was a two-step move the horse had been trained for, after all. But if the girl’s scream of obvious terror wasn’t going to summon the men folk, then surely her dying screams of anguish as the horse’s hooves crushed her skull into the flattened earth of the courtyard would do the trick.
Then, the man thought sadly, he’d be obligated to slaughter the lot of them. And he just didn’t feel like he had the energy for that right now.
“Please,” he said as softly as possible.
His own voice sounded strange to him, and he marveled at how hoarse and raw it seemed. He hadn’t done anything but shout for the last week and a half, battle cry after battle cry, command after command. He sounded desperate. He sounded dangerous. He swallowed and smacked his dry lips, willing himself to try again.
“I — I’m to offer you our hospi — hospitality. Sir.”
Surprisingly, the stuttering girl was regaining her calm. She had wisely torn her wide green eyes away from his and was now making a show of curtseying to him in her long skirts. As she stood up, pretending to raise her face to his but avoiding his gaze altogether, he took in her features.
Pagan, of an ancient bloodline he couldn’t recognize. Narrow nose, defined cheekbones, and eyebrows closely set to her eyes. As he moved his gaze down her blonde hair then up again, he took in the locks straying from the thin, golden and decorative band around her crown to the partially braided tresses that flowed over her shoulders and down her back; he noticed the faint crescent moon, woad blue, on her forehead, tucked just at the edge of her youthful hairline.
So, he thought to himself, his eyes roving over the willowy young woman openly. She was of the Old Kind, was she? How many of their “traditions” did she know? And what of their sense of hospitality? Did she know of the Friendship of Thighs?
He found himself grinning, not realizing nor caring for the leering menace of that expression upon his worn and scarred face, nor was he aware of what he looked like to a woman newly come into her role as hostess.
To her, he knew he looked like Death itself, come solely for her innocent soul.
The night had become tense, electric even, and had been cast about in shades of blue. Cobalt clouds chased cerulean whisps across the velvet expanse of the sapphire sky. The full and portentous moon was rising, a rough and un-minted silver coin pressed flat against the heavens like a disc that had fallen to the bottom of a clear well. That sky that was deepening in hues as the moments wore on. Speckles of flickering white were making themselves known to Her senses, tiny dots reflected in Her mind’s questing astral eye as each winked into existence the darker the sky became.
The stars, She realized with glee and delight.
Shake the sky and the stars could fall! But that moon that She treasured, and so dearly missed? It was eternal and would never stop rising, should She have Her way!
In an upper chamber of the palisade-lined house of her family, Cassandra carefully pried off the frightening man’s boots. The stench of his unwashed feet was atrocious, but she had grown up accustomed to soldiers returning from battle as bruised and beaten as this man. They came by here often, and she had helped her cousins and others care for them, making them feel more welcomed than they had been at whatever enemy’s doorstep they had just left. She was used to this smell, to the sight of the blisters and wounds on a traveller’s feet.
Well not really all that used to it, she pouted to herself as she began to carefully wash his feet with lukewarm water and a clean rag. Usually, they were a lot less abused than this man had been. He had to have seen a great deal of war, and very recently. The acrid stench of barely dried blood was all over him.
Cassie moved to behind where the mat sat plank-straight on a stool, standing behind him and pulling gently at his dark hair. He had the braids of a seasoned warrior in his matted brown locks. She carefully extracted what leaves and twigs and debris she could, letting it drop to the floor. Then, using a cup in hand, she poured water from a basin at her feet over his naked back, his shoulders, his arms. She caught as much water as she could with the cloth in her free hand but let the rest slip to the floor. She’d have to wash it later anyway.
It was part of their tradition, their homage to the strangers the family welcomed into the house. Water was precious, always to be cherished. And it was a sacred thing to have so much that they could afford the water to bathe a stranger.
The girl ran her hands exploratively over the large, unstitched surface wounds, wondering if she should find a bone needle and some thin sinew thread and ask to sew them. On the shoulder blade of the man’s back, she found a strange, tattooed mark the size of her palm. Her fingertips ran over it gently, tracing the ancient knot-work. What was it? Cassie tilted her head, pressing into the skin and moving the man’s hair.
It was a dragon, the rearing head of a mighty and fearsome dragon!
Then, lightning quick, the man’s heavy hand reached back and grabbed her wrist. Cassandra whimpered as the soldier drew her around to in front of him.
The touch of a woman’s soft fingers against his hair and his skin had ignited in him hunger. And he couldn’t wait anymore. When the two older women in the open kitchen had seen him, their eyes had been quick to note the hidden crest stitched onto the arm of the leather tunic showing beneath his chain mail. And they had known him, had known he knew of their old ways. And they had nodded imperceptibly, instructing this young woman to take him upstairs.
To treat him as a friend of the family.
As she cowered before him, as he forced her to her knees on the slippery wood of the wet floor, her slender wrist bones feeling as light and hollow as those of a bird’s, he realized something very new and significant. And pleasing.
The lass did not know what was expected of her. She did not know what ‘friendship’ meant in the days of the Old Ways, when families could not afford dowries and had to be purposeful in introducing new blood to their own coveted lineages. She did not know of the Friendship of Thighs.
Outside, the others of the family and household were no doubt winding their way up that distant hillside he had seen upon his arrival, their flickering candles the only sign of their travels in the enveloping darkness. They wouldn’t light great bonfires like they surely did once upon a time. It wouldn’t do to have the Emperor’s soldiers find them worshipping their Pagan gods, doing their Pagan dances.
The soldier could hear them chanting softly, rhythmically, so he drew the girl with him as he went to the slitted window of the room and peered out.
“Do you know what ceremony they are going to do, lass? Do you know their songs well?” he whispered, pushing her in front of him and putting his rough lips to her ear.
With his breath hot on her neck, he brushed her blonde hair away. He could feel her trembling beneath his hands as he held her from behind by her slender upper arms.
“Yes-s,” she stammered.
“Good. Because you will not be with them tonight.”
He turned her to him, and his mouth on hers was hungry, starved. As her small hands fluttered like doves against his chest, he eased himself towards the bed, pulling her with him.
At first, she fought him. His fault, really, for forgetting himself and thinking only of his own needs. But as he moved with her, as he taught her the oldest dance of all, she rose to greet him and soon, she learned moves of her own.
Undulating. Rising. Pressing up into the earth and stone that covered Her and had kept Her hidden, buried. Moving next through the grainfields and grasses. Upwards, seeking the sky and the night. Upwards, She rose like an angel, wings outspread. She could hear them chanting, hear them calling Her. Calling out to Her. Calling for Her. They wanted Her blessing. At last, She turned Her orb-like eyes upwards, to the sky. And there She found the moon. Lovely diamond-colored Moon, silver coin Moon. Eternal Moon.
She flew upward, to greet the moon, free at last.
Her body ached, but for good or bad, Cassie did not know. Again and again, he entered her. He turned her this way and that, and Cassandra was nothing but a puppet to the man, a bending branch beneath the storm of his desire. He made her writhe on the sheets, on the soft mattress. He made her cry out, and she would have called his name out plaintively, desperately, worshipfully, had she known it.
As his fingers danced in places she had only ever dreamed of being touched, she gasped and moaned. And when his mouth followed those fingers, Cassandra felt all the world shake.
Tonight the world was thinly veiled. It was a night of magick and mystery, prophesied at the beginning of each year when it was decided what ceremonies would be held that year, and when. Outside the house, far and away on the high hill, she could hear her mother, her father, her cousins and aunts and uncles. She could hear their voices, trying to draw down that full and portentous moon.
But in here, the magick was of a different kind. It was made of two bodies, two hearts, two souls. And as he made the world disappear and turned her dreams and fantasies into reality, the stranger made her dance for him.
It took some time before he felt he was finally satiated. The girl’s body was unused, fresh and new, and he felt a great sense of pride that he had been granted the right to teach her all she would ever need to know about making love to a man. For awhile, he had forgotten what it was like to hold virgin flesh in his hands. But the touch and smell of her had reminded him. And soon enough, she was as wanting as he. They found that they had the same fires within them as all men and women had for all of time.
Now she lay comforted in his arms, her pale wisp of a body curled against his own aching flesh and bruised bones. She was exhausted, and so was he.
But just as he was about to doze off, the scent of her on his lips and in his nose lulling and subduing his constant vigilance, he heard a sound.
It was a scream. Then there was another.
And then, he heard a sound he had heard before.
Rising up in front of the Moon, She knew how She looked to the small ones below. A curling shadow of blackness, the epitome of their magick at last made visible to them as a dark silhouette against Her friend, that enchanting Moon. But when She came to them, when She answered their call, they did not greet Her with open arms and honorable kisses.
She raced after them, flying through the air with the speed of a great hunting falcon. Her wings were spread, and She glided down on them, scooping up one after another of Her dedicated but fleeing followers. With each breath, She released a bugling cry of triumph and victory, rising up for but a moment to greet Her Moon with a silvery kiss before returning to the Dance.
“Gods, what was that?!”
No longer bound by exhaustion, Cassandra was throwing her robes and skirts on as she ran to the door of the room. Behind her, the man stood at the window. At the first scream, he had moved so fast Cassie had barely seen him as more than a dark and quick shadow. Now he stood in the blue-silver glow of the moonlight, frozen.
Was he even breathing?
“Come on! We have to go see!” she pleaded.
Cassandra picked up his sword belt, dragging it heavily with her as she ran down the stairs to the main floor of the house. If he was too stunned to help, then at least she could use his weapons herself. Maybe they were under attack from the Romans after all. Maybe one of their neighbors had finally given their practices away for a purse of gold coins. If she ever found out who, Cassie swore she would find them in the dark woods some day and slice their throats before they ever knew they were about to die.
Dressed haphazardly, Cassie ran out into the lush backyard gardens, heading for the henge hill.
Where had she gone?
The man turned from the door where he had been about to follow the young woman, and looked back out the window, into the sky.
There! There She was! The great Dragon!
And the girl he had only just now made a true woman was on her way to greet the Dragon — with HIS swords!
He ran after her, pulling on his breeches and forgetting to bother with his boots.
By the time he got outside, it would be too late to save the idiot girl. There was no help for her, not against a dragon. But at least he could get his sword back.
What was this? A small one, running up the hill? She could see so much in its heart, see so much in this one’s destiny. She could smell the life blood of this, the last of the clan of followers. After her, there would be no more of them.
She had come as they had called. Of course, they had not known what they were doing, who or what they were calling. And the Moon had deserved and even earned their worship and prayers. But oh, today, on this day, She had finally been able to answer the chanting that She had ever ached to answer before but been forbidden to respond to, for century upon century.
This night, during this hour, She was allowed to feed, but only if they called Her. And they had. And She had fed. And She had danced in the sky and proudly displayed to Her friend, the Moon, all of Her ancient glory. Now this last one was coming to Her, standing still in the face of Her glorious presence. Frozen rigid with fear at the sight of Her.
Useless sword, useless flesh. But, what was this destiny…
She looked into the swirling eyes of the dragon as it hovered before her at the top of the hill. All about Cassie lay the blood and gore of her family, her kin, everyone she had ever loved or even known in all her young life. Their entrails and scattered limbs littered the grass like the bodies of snakes shedding their skins en masse, or like worms on a dewy night or after a rainstorm. No one moved, because no one lived. Cassandra was afraid to breath, frozen to the spot, clutching the soldier’s weapons to her chest.
And the dragon was looking at her, curling upon itself with its long serpentine body, hovering in the air like an impossibly large dragonfly. Its great wings were beating slow and heavy, and Cassandra could feel them stealing the air from between herself and the dragon. Stealing the air from her very lungs.
She opened her mouth to scream.
Before the girl could scream, he was there. Slowly, his eyes not on the great Dragon but on the girl’s hands, he pulled the blades free, easing them out of her fingers. Eyes cast down submissively, he made to back away and down the hillside.
He wasn’t a part of this. He was in no danger from the great Dragon, She would know he was marked. But he wanted no part in the honor this family had unwittingly given him. This was no place for a mere warrior like him.
“Do not move, Marked Man,” She whispered to him.
She knew he heard Her, for he immediately became rooted to the spot he stood.
In the soft light of Her Moon, She felt so full and satiated. Did She have time for one last meal? One last delicious gulp of flesh before the Moon reached the zenith of the hour and She had to return back to Her imprisonment?
She would go back with the songs they had sung to Her echoing in Her dreams, their screams a comfort on the long nights that were coming. So many nights would come before someone would sing for Her again. She looked at the tender girl-flesh, smelling of fresh bedding, and deep within Her magickal soul, She sighed in acquiescence.
“She is yours,” She whispered at last, and Her breath washed over the wee ones like it was a fog. They would sleep tonight, and then tomorrow they would wander. And they would forget. She had to make sure they would forget. If they remembered, then no one would return in the following centuries to sing Her back to the feast.
It felt like days had passed. But where was she?
Cassandra tried to lift a hand to her head, but it was too heavy. She dropped it to her thigh, and leaned her cheek into the armored back of the man riding the horse in front of her.
Where were they going?
Her other hand was in his lap, and he was clutching her fingers, too tightly, she felt. Too close to him. She didn’t know him well enough to be riding like this with him, wherever they were going.
Or did she? She felt she knew him. Didn’t she know him? Something about him excited her, brought painful but yearning memories back to her tired and aching body. But she was also very afraid.
Behind him, the girl stirred for a moment but soon returned to her quieted, trance-like state. He liked it better than her pathetic, whimpering, half-asleep state. He’d gotten tired of that after the first day.
Or had it been the second day?
He couldn’t remember. And he wasn’t sure it mattered.
The tattoo on his back itched as if to remind him of something. Then, with a final burn that made him wince, it faded away into nothingness. Just a deeply-cut woad tattoo of old.
He hung his head, willing to doze and let the horse take them onward down the empty road. Out of the three of them, he thought sleepily, the war horse seemed to be the only one well rested and aware of where they were going.
Her Moon had long since set, and the following nights and days were clouded and dark. She didn’t care. She could not see the smoky grey coloring of those sun-obscuring clouds from Her hidden, earthen bed of dreams.
She licked Her lips clean once more and closed Her heavy eyes, content to sleep again – for now. The world did not know of Her, would never know of Her. It had its heroes and its demons, its legends and its myths. In another few hundred years, the small wee ones would call on Her, and She would come forth to feed again, and to dance just for Her friend, the Moon. The world might be different, but She would be the same. As would Her Moon. She wondered, as She slept, if the children of the two She had set free would be among those who called Her in the future days of lore.
And She fell asleep wondering how they would taste.