Luckily, the woman who came looking for me thought I would have done the smart thing and gone to get help, as opposed to making myself a sitting duck, just waiting to be found. A couple of the guys who followed her walked around the edge of the tree line, but the forest wasn’t dense, and the trees weren’t thick enough for me to hide behind. I would have been discovered if they had bothered to look up, but they were satisfied that I was gone when they couldn’t see me running off in the distance.
I tried to get settled into the branch I was on, wondering how long I should wait before going to check on the guys, when I felt my eyes drooping. All I could think was that this was the worst possible time for this to be happening, before the forest disappeared, and I was someone else…
“I love you truly, truly dear, life with it's sorrow, life with it's tear, fades into dreams when I feel you are near, for I love you truly, truly dear! Ah, love 'tis something, to feel your kind hand…”
Beth sang to the great bulge of her stomach, one hand rubbing it while the other flipped through the pages of an incredibly old volume. Even older than the Chronicles. The pages had turned brown and looked frail, which she reflected by carefully bringing up each page and gently putting it down on the other side. The right pages held incredible amounts of text, the fancy kind that makes it hard to understand with all of the extra legs, but the left had beautiful pictures of people, places and things. There were happy families, smiling men and women, lakes, small towns, great towers… all of them warm and bright.
She was more focused on the child in her womb, that I could feel moving and pressing on my organs, especially my bladder, than on the happy pictures.
“Ah yes, 'tis something, by your side to stand, gone is the sorrow, gone doubt and fear, for you love me truly, truly dear!”
Her singing became distracted when she got into darker images of two towers with smoke billowing out, a giant wave taking over buildings, a forest on fire…
She stopped suddenly when the page revealed nothing more than a crescent moon on the back of a woman’s neck. It was completely harmless, but I would have stopped even if she hadn’t.
I could feel the words and hear them coming out of my mouth, but I would not have been able to decipher what was written on the page otherwise. “Prophecy of the Crescent Moon,” she said before looking around, as if to make sure no one was there.
“The earliest historical account of the Crescent Moon Prophecy was in the fevered rantings of Saint Malachy, shortly before his death in 1148. ‘She who is marked by the Crescent Moon brought forth the Coalescence, and the world was bathed in light. It was miraculous to behold such a blessed sight of angels in white.’
The next was from the accounts of Ioanit, trusted historian of Talina and Zeke, who ruled the earthly realm from 1385 to 1460. Though he did not bear witness to the ritual, he recorded part of the incantation here:
‘From the kindling of Emmanuel’s Betrayal
burns the soul of his untouched child.
Let the tears of Isis fuel the flames
in the arms of Yggdrasil.
As the blood of the incumbent quells the fire,
may the heart of the Bearer of the Crescent Moon
originate the Coalescence.’
Without the completion of the ritual, the powers granted through the Coalescence could not be passed on, so shortly after 1460, they returned to the source. It is said they lie in wait for the Bearer of the Crescent Moon, so they may be claimed.”
Beth flipped through more pages, then found another book and looked up ‘Bearer of the Crescent Moon’.
“Little is known of the origins of the Bearer of the Crescent Moon in regard to the Prophecy. Most historians agree that it refers to the line of Talina and Zeke, who ruled over many tribes for nearly a century, though some have attempted to create her.”
The page was covered in drawings of these attempts, including knives, fire, actual crescents…The next page was even worse, with an amateur surgeon listing the steps to remove a heart from someone’s chest while it is still beating. I wanted to turn away, but Beth kept reading.
“Mommy?” A tiny voice came from outside the room, making us jump. A girl, maybe three-years-old, cautiously walked in.
“Helen.” Beth’s face lit up as she gently closed the book she had been reading from. I had assumed Beth was pregnant with her daughter, Helen. As far as I knew, my great-grandmother didn’t have any siblings.
“What are you reading?” the little girl asked, coming close.
“Just some nonsense, love. What have you been up to?”
Helen tried to look at the book once more before giving up and answering the question, “Daddy’s making dinner.”
“Pasta again?” Beth asked with a smile, like she wanted nothing more.
“The baby’s favorite!” Helen said excitedly, putting her hands on our stomach. The baby kicked, and I swore it was like it recognized its big sister and was saying hello.
“You know what the baby really wants right now?” We got up from the chair and brought the little girl out of the room, leaving the old book behind.
“Ice cream?” Helen asked with a smile, sharing what she wanted.
“Maybe after dinner,” Beth humored her. “Right now, he would love for you to play the piano and sing for him. Mummies lullabies aren’t doing the trick and his soccer match is all over my organs.” The way she referred to the baby as a ‘he’, after my conversation with Caleb, made me think I might know exactly why I never heard about this child, and I felt sick. Part of it was Beth’s morning sickness, but a huge part of it was feeling this baby inside me, feeling how much she loved him, and knowing he was never going to grow up.
“Do you know what song he wants?” Helen asked as she took her seat in front of the piano. “Clair de Lune?”
“That would be perfect.” Beth took a seat beside the piano and the little girl played and sang us the French folk song. “Au Clair de la Lune, mon ami Pierrot…”
We rubbed the stomach and smiled for the girl, but while this should have been a perfect, happy little moment in time for Beth, who might not know she was cursed, but all I could feel inside her was dread…
I was barely hanging on to the tree when I woke up, so opening my eyes gave me the tiniest of jolts and I fell, trying my best to spread out the impact like Sam had instructed when he caught me jumping off the boat shed when I was little.
Hitting the ground knocked the wind out of me, but I was still reeling from the shock of what I had seen.
I was trying to figure out a different way the prophecy could be interpreted when two men, dressed all in black, with eyes as dark as coal, came and stood on either side above me.
“Well, well. Look what we have here. Not so great at hiding, are we?” They both leered down at me.
This was not good.