MOON MAIDEN MATILDA
by Bonnie Sentinel
1 Summertide, 1484 DR
Matilda steps through the tall grass that grows over the gentle hills in which her erstwhile home is nestled like the egg of a bird, the tiny village of Saren. The moon is rising over the gathering of houses whose lights twinkle in the night like the motes in the moon’s luminous train. Matilda’s father lives there, as did his father, and the line of fathers as far as anyone can remember. Her mother does not live there. Her father’s little home is a single room, a rectangle of pale joined stones with a roof of thatch. It is the house in which she was born, though she lives there no longer. Matilda brushes the cold dew from her legs as she steps onto the Long Road that leads to the south. She shoulders a simple linen sack, stuffed full with figs and olives, offerings left by the villagers, left out on stoops and windowsills. Offerings for the Moon Maiden.
It has been three days since anyone has seen little Talis, and three days since Akkod’s men rode this way. Matilda turns to look back at the glimmering lights of her birthplace, briefly, but every moment she spends here is another life in danger of the disfigured, fingerless Baron’s vengeful wrath, another child gone missing, another farmer or peasant-woman dragged and beaten or worse. South. The faeries whispered “South, to Greenest. Far to the south.” And so with her sack of provisions Matilda heads off on the road, a silver trail of frost following in her footsteps.
The folk of Saren are simple, humble, and close to the hard-scrabble of living from the earth. They tend sheep in the hills, grow olives and figs in their fields, and hunt in the strange forest called ‘Ardeep’. Matilda’s father is a cobbler, as, technically, was Matilda until a stranger calling took her.
14 The Time of Flowers, 1484 DR
Once every nine years a name is drawn. A name has been drawn every nine years for as far back as the grandmothers’ tales go. Matilda’s name has been drawn, carved crudely on a small tile of cherry wood. The undrawn names are the names of the other unwed girls in the village. There is a feast. Figs and olives and the bounty of the woods.
Night falls and Selune rises in a silver crescent, followed by her shining train of lesser luminaries. The grandmothers gather together to wash Matilda, weeping. Matilda weeps too, but silently, as they dress her in a white gown. They adorn her head with a thin crown of twisted olive branches. Then, in tearful silence the village walks the chosen maiden, Matilda, the Moon Maiden, to the edge of the woods. There an otherwordly being awaits, a faerie willow-thin and tall, still and black as the void of space or the canopy of the trees under the moonlight. From its feathered cloak it extends its long, pale fingers, and draws her to it. Matilda’s bare feet sweep over the moonlit grass, and she is suddenly swallowed by the darkness.
Matilda is sixteen summers old when she is offered as a sacrifice to the faeries of the forest. Matilda is sixteen summers old when the Archfey takes her hand in the Silver Heart of the Woods.
28 Leaffall, 1479 DR
To the south of Saren rises Cragclyff Hold, the castle of Baron Akkod, the noble whose holdings encompass Saren and a handful of other tiny villages near the Long Road, north of Waterdeep.
Akkod with brass rings on his thick fingers. Akkod with his cruel lips. Akkod who takes his taxes in more than the coin of the land. Akkod who rides into town to revel in the beating of his serfs, in the terror of his coming, in the terror of his sword and the stamping horses of his riders.
“Run to the forest, Matilda,” her father whispers as he watches their approach on the Long Road. Every month the lord would come to collect his tax, but in Leaffall he came for the tax of the harvest. In Leaffall Akkod took what he pleased, and what he took was never to be returned.
“Run, child.”
She runs to the forest. On the edge of that primeval wood into whose heart men dared not go she waits. She watches from the cover of those ancient trees as the Baron’s men chase her kin from their homes. Their cruel laughter rings down the hillside. She watches as a home is put to the torch without reason or purpose but for the blind joy of destruction. Black smoke rises into the sky. She wraps her arms around the trunk of a cherry tree and sobs into its mute embrace. In the dark woods Matilda whispers prayers for vengeance. She prays for a sword.
But now there is a terrible sound and she looks up and suddenly the men are at her house and have seized her father. They are dragging him into the dusty square in the middle of the village. He is shouting in terror as their mailed fists fall on him.
Now Matilda runs, bare feet brushing over the grass. She runs quickly, blindly, not knowing what she will do when she gets there but that somehow she is suddenly in that square and Akkod’s riders are all around her, their horses stamping and rearing in a circle of dust. Matilda balls her fists and shouts words she won’t remember at Akkod. Akkod with his cruel lips. Akkod with brass rings on his thick fingers. His fist comes down. Matilda stumbles, tasting blood. His fist falls again and Matilda falls into darkness.
14 The Time of Flowers, 1484 DR
Matilda does not know how long she walks with the faerie, pulled in close to its pale body by its long, strong arm. Its white and wrinkled skin is cold against her cheek but smells of cherries in bloom. Its cloak is over her shoulder, and draped in its darkness they walk toward the heart of the wood. A great company is gathered there; she can see their silver forms dancing between the trees as they wind their way closer by the deer paths and fae trails that form the invisible labyrinth of the forest. And then suddenly they are there in the pool of moonlight, and they are surrounded by the host of faeries, dryads, fae cats, tiny pixies whose wings chime like little bells, will-o-the-whips that bob and sway, dancing brownies, willowy fae in raven cloaks, unicorns, and the shimmering forms of girls gone into these woods before, their ever-youthful faces adorned in silver jewels and draped in iridescent mantles.
And beyond them all and most of all there is the Lady. The Lady as immense as the great silver oak tree that is her throne. The Lady who is radiant, beautiful, and terrible. The lady whose thousand shawls move as if stirred in an invisible wind. One by one each creature turns its unearthly eyes to Matilda, then to the Lady.
Silently, the Lady extends her hand in welcome. Matilda’s escort extends its clawed foot out like a dancer and bows deeply, and in a sweep of its black feathers is gone. Alone, Matilda walks forward. She steps up the gnarled roots that form primordial stairs up to the foot of the silver throne. Matilda stands before the Archfey. She reaches up and takes Her hand.
17 The Time of Flowers, 1484
It is three days after the Lady took her hand and Matilda walks into town at dawn, draped in a strange iridescent shawl. A thin and silver sword swings from her hip. The first farmer to see her yelps and runs ahead of her, waving his broad hat and screaming in alarm. As Matilda reaches the first houses, the villagers, her kin and fellows, are already hiding behind their doors and peering at her in wonder and fear from their windows. She walks to the dusty square at the center of town. A trail of frost lingers where her bare feet fall. And now her father emerges from their home, their room of fitted stones, the home where Matilda was born. He is trembling and crying, his arms held out as he stumbles mutely towards her. He sweeps her into his embrace and somehow this breaks the spell over the village of Saren. The villagers step tentatively from their homes, then one by one come to see the Moon Maiden who returned. The girl who came back from the Forest.
“Don’t worry,” Matilda said, to no one in particular, tears running down her face. “Don’t worry about anything. The faeries heard my prayers.”
End
