Moira
For a long moment Moira couldn’t move, either. Only her heart, which was beating frantically, kept going. She stared at the wall of water, blue, white, green, the top waves tipped with red from the rays of the setting sun.
And then—she couldn’t quite figure out how—she looked right into the water in front of her, and realized with a gasp that there was a figure inside it.
Impossible! Yet there it was, in the middle of all that rushing water. A huge figure, greenish, human. Well, human-ish, anyway, but big as a house. It was wearing some sort of trousers and a kind of shirt, which hung outside the pants.
Oh God! Moira thought.
For a second Moira closed her eyes, but what she’d already seen was still imprinted on the inside of her lids: the giant man-thing turning away from her, with the eleven girls clutched in its hands and the photographer … the photographer was in the creature’s mouth, held there between enormous protruding teeth.
“Let them go!” Moira screamed at it. But her cry was obscured by the rush of water and by the screams of the other girls.
It was Moira’s own scream that gave her momentum. Her body knew before her brain that she had to save them. If she’d actually given it any thought, she’d never have tried. But she raced to the bridge, leapt one-footed onto the low wall, and then launched herself at the creature’s back. She caught the end of its shirttails and hung on.
“You … You…” She couldn’t think of a curse strong enough. “You monster.”
Shut up, Moira! she thought. The last thing she needed to do now was alert the monster that she was hanging on to him. And what, in the name of Bach, Brahms, and Bartok, am I doing dangling dangerously on the back end of a giant creature like some crazed movie hero, way above a rushing river, when I should be back in my car, calling the police on my cell phone?
She glanced down.
Mistake. Big mistake. Way below her, the river not only rushed, it hurtled, churned, tumbled, roared.
Lucky I’m not afraid of heights, she told herself. But, I think I’m scared spitless of giant monsters.
And it was too late—way too late—to let go.
* * *
THE MONSTER ALIEN CREATURE THING walked for minutes, hours, days. Moira had no idea how long. She simply held on to his shirttails with her strong fingers, fingers that practiced harp three to five hours a day. She clutched the sloppy wet material and prayed.
But after a while, she could feel herself starting to slip down the shirttails, fingers so cold and cramped, she couldn’t hold on any longer. Her hands were strong, but not that strong.
Don’t scream, she warned herself. Don’t make a sound. But the breath rushed out of her as she fell, screaming. She landed with an awful crunch, not in the river as she had feared, but on stone.
Ouch, she thought. It was the last thought she had for quite some time.
* * *
SHE HEARD A VOICE.
“Do not move or Aenmarr will return.”
“Aenmarr? What’s an Aenmarr?” She was crumpled up on her side with her eyes closed. She was afraid to open them, her head hurt so bad. Any sort of light and her skull might explode.
“Shhhhhh, child of man.”
She lay still but muttered, “Child of man and woman actually.”
The voice sighed wearily. “If you value your life, be quiet.”
Shut up, Moira! she told herself and was quiet, but she groaned inwardly, What have I gotten myself into?
“Trouble, human child. Trouble.”
It’s in my head! The voice was in her head. It knew what she was thinking. Gasping, Moira tried to sit up.
“Shhhh!”
Something warm and soft pressed against her side, holding her down.
Closing her mouth, she let the warm thing push her back down. Shut up, Moira, she warned herself again.
“Now you understand.”
But she didn’t understand, not really. She didn’t understand who Aenmarr was, or where it came from, or who the voice was, or what—she thought in a rush—she was doing lying on stone.
Maybe she’d drowned in that wall of water and this was the afterlife. Only it seemed very hard for Heaven and too cool for Hell.
“Not what, but who. When Aenmarr passes, I will tell you all,” the voice assured her. “Now, hush.”
Oh, she thought, Aenmarr is the alien monster.
She put her head back down and waited. Till Aenmarr passed, got in his spaceship, and went back to Mars, or fairyland or wherever. “When Aenmarr passes.” It sounded like a title of one of Daniel Berlin’s pieces, and she thought—a bit hysterically—I’ll have to tell him. Though as she thought this, a traitor part of her was afraid she was never going to get to tell anyone anything again.
* * *
AFTER A WHILE—A LONG while in which she didn’t dare move, even to check her watch—the voice in her head said, “Rise human child. Follow me.”
She stood gingerly, felt for broken bones, found none, though she bet she’d find bruises soon enough. It was now dark, a deep and relentless dark, darker than night should have been, and she wondered briefly how she was going to be able to follow what she couldn’t see. She also wondered about finding the girls, wondered how to go about rescuing them. She guessed—she knew—that the photographer was beyond help.
Something slightly lighter than the dark moved ahead of her. She put out a hand to touch it. Felt fur. Heard a growl.
Withdrawing her hand quickly, she whispered, “Sorry,” to the creature, the dog, whatever.
“Follow,” it said, “but do not touch me again.”
“Sorry,” she repeated, and followed.
* * *
AFTER A TIME, SHE REALIZED that though she hadn’t actually broken any bones, she ached everywhere. Her fingers were stiff, her back was sore, her arms felt as if they’d been pulled from their sockets and then been replaced badly. Her head was hammering away as if someone were beating out the four opening notes of Beethoven’s Fifth on her skull over and over and over again.
The voice in her head told her, “Come straight, now left, step over the rock, now left again.”
She might as well have been blind in that deep dark. She stopped and looked around. Rescue the girls? First I have to rescue myself.
“How,” came the answer, “will you even rescue yourself if you do not listen?”
She who always had an answer, had none.
At last the voice said, “Duck,” only she didn’t duck fast enough and banged the top of her head on what she later realized was the entrance to a low cave. It set her headache clanging again. She had to drop to her knees and crawl in.
“That wasn’t funny,” she whispered to the creature ahead of her.
“It was not meant to be.”
The cave opening was narrow in the beginning but widened quickly.
“You can stand now if you wish.”
Moira stood slowly, her hands above her just in case. Relieved, she stretched to her full height. The cavern was lit with a strange phosphorescent light. As her vision adjusted to it, she began to make out the softly rounded cave walls. Turning, she saw the light reflected in a pair of dark eyes. The creature who’d guided her to the cave was smaller than she expected, and to her surprise was neither alien nor dog, but a fox, male, with two jaunty ears and a long furry tail.
“Who are you?” she asked, hands on her hips. “More important—where am I?”
“Sit, child of man … and woman … and I will reveal all.” The fox’s shoulders moved up and down. He seemed to be chuckling.
Moira sat. In such a short time, she’d learned a kind of obedience. The stone floor was not as cold as she’d feared.
The fox sat, too, and curled his bushy tail around his feet. “You are in Trollholm. And that creature who captured your friends was Aenmarr the troll, whose bridge you came over at sunset.”
“A troll? You have got to be kidding!” Moira wondered if the whole thing was some sort of dream. Had she fallen asleep while driving? “You mean like trit-trot, trit-trot … the three billy goats going over a bridge and…”
“This is no fairy story,” the fox said, his pink tongue suddenly slipping out between his teeth.
Remembering the troll’s awful protruding teeth and the photographer ground between them, Moira shivered. “No happily ever after?” she asked.
“Not for everyone,” the fox told her. “Perhaps not for anyone.”
Tears suddenly filled Moira’s eyes. She didn’t know if she was crying for herself, or for the captured girls, or for the poor photographer she’d last seen in Aenmarr the troll’s mouth. But she couldn’t stop the tears from coming, and soon sobs racked her body sending fat sloppy tears to splash onto the stone cave floor.
The fox licked its fur and watched her impassively, his eyes like obsidian.