Once Upon a Quarter Moon

A child crouches and draws spirals in the dirt. He pulls oat-like seed off blades of grass and sprinkles them over the spirals. His watchful mother sits behind shucking corn. A baby cries. She departs inside.

A traveler crouches beyond the village wards. 'Child,' he calls between slats of reclaimed wood. 'Com'th yonder.'

The child looks up to the gate between the blood warded stone walls. He draws another spiral and sprinkles more seed. 

'Child,' the traveler calls again. 'Aye's wounded. Aye on'l ask ya to retrieve me a tin-cture.'

The child rises and drops his stick and the seed falls from his hand as dry grains of sand and litters a trail behind him.

'The Elder's say not to talk to strangers,' the child says.

The wounded traveler peeks through the gate slats, his face half crusted in clay and his nose lacerated with a red seeping pit and his hair is slick with sweat and grease. The child falters.

'Will ya buy me a healin' tin-cture?' The traveler says. 'Ya keep what remain ah the silvers and aye be on me way.' 

'The Elders tell us to turn a blind eye to those in need.' The child walks on.  

'Me wound shows festerin', child.' 

The child turns and bobs his head to look. 'What happened to you?' 

'A lashing,' says the traveler.

The child examines the palms of his healed pitted hands and shows them too the traveler.

'Aye be on me way, swear't on the Great Mother,' says the wounded traveler and he tosses a silver piece to the child. 

The child trots to the glistening metal as a magpie. The traveler tosses fourteen more and the child takes all.

'One healing tincture,' says the child, cupping the silver. He kicks up silt in his wake and runs into town.

The Great Mother totem greets him in the town square, a blindfolded woman pouring an endless trickle of water from a jug. Children hop over sticks in dirty sandals and a man on a stool plucks unharmoniously at a banjo. The child hooks left to the apothecary. 

The child stands on his toes and lays down the silver and says, 'I need a healing tincture, quick!' and the withered apothecary raises a brow.

'Is't the baby again?' The apothecary takes a coin and bends one between his teeth. He takes three, an honest deal with interest. 'Where'd ya get the money? Haven't taken to robbery, have ya?'

The child hesitates. 'From a patron, sir.'

'Your mother's working again, is she?' And he turns over the tincture.

The child scampers back to the wounded healer. He reaches past the stone wards and through the gate slats and hands the tincture and twelve silver pieces back to the wounded traveler. The traveler smiles, a rot yellow-toothed smile, and grabs the child by the wrist.

'Thank ye,' says the traveler. 

The child recoils against the travelers tightening grip. The traveler releases and takes the tincture and goes on his way. The child looks to his wrist, a speck of blood oozes from his vein. He runs back to his stick and draws another spiral. 

Two suns pass and on the third moon, beneath the clear eyes of the Great Beyond, the apothecary is set ablaze. 

The winds shift and a spark catches the dry grass and soon a tent follows. A second fire erupts on the western edge of town, another on the north, and the Elder's scramble to sound the bells and the father's run to the wells with their buckets and mother's huddle their children in the streets and then begins the collective screams. 

A man lay in the street, blood pooling from his neck. A shadow crosses beneath the totem of the Great Mother, followed by two, four, seven more. 

The child is roused by his mother. 'Come, come quickly.' Her jaw quakes and she clings to the crying baby.

A handkerchief-masked raider lurches through the door, a swell of heat bathes the room red as a dust ridden desert sunset. The raider rushes forward and grabs for the baby. The mother becomes trapped against the wall and claws at the man. He raises his hand and slaps her flat across the cheek and she and the baby fall to the ground in a clamor and the child yelps and cowers in the opposite corner. 

She tells the child to run as the baby is ripped from her arms. The raider brings the heel of his boot to her forehead and she falls limp against the wall. 

The child scurries across the floor, he catches splinters in the soft blemishes of his hands. The raider's boots echo across the room and the baby wails. Inches from the door, the child sees his village caught in the torrent of war. 

Villagers are screaming at the chase of having become prey. A raider throws a knife and stabs a villager in the back as an Elder is knocked from his feet and shoved into the well and a surge of flames engulfs a child. Four raiders carry heaps of gold and silver and turquoise and two raiders lug dripping dark-haired scalps through the sick squelching mud and another climbs the totem and saws off the Great Mother's head. 

The masked raider stoops and grabs the child roughly behind the neck and lifts him off the ground. The child squirms and claws and nips at the man and is dragged onto the porch. 

He is taken to an iron caged cart where women and children are congregated with hands bound tightly above their heads and their clothes are battered and caked with mud and vary from silence to madness. 

A dark rider upon a donkey clops past the cart. The lead of the beast is guided by masked man. The man upon the donkey looks down upon the child, his eyes bejeweled and glisten as ruby and his face scorched and charred and his robes carry on the whirlwinds of heat and ash.

The guide removes his mask. He bears a healed lesion across his nose. 

The wounded traveler.

'Not him,' says the traveler.

'Ta the void with ya, he be my spoils,' the masked raider spits. He pinches the child's neck tighter and the child winces and squirms.

'Listen to your superior,' says the red eyed rider with sedative command. The rider's eyes flicker a beam of vermilion.

The raider drops the child and the child coughs into the weathered silt spirals. The metallic accessories of the travelers boots jingle as a deluge of feverous chimes. He crouches before the boy. 

'Join us 'n pr'sper,' he says. 

'You felled the wards with my blood,' the child grimaces. 'You said you'd be on your way.'

'Aye, but not wh'ere to.'

The child spits on the traveler's snakeskin boot.

'Th'n suffer 'n soli-tude.' The traveler casts twelve silvers into the spirals.

The End.

Cover photo credit: Arda E. Genç on Unsplash