Three Moons

An Odd Collection of Friends

Lile was running. Running for her life. There had been a moment when she had stood frozen. A moment when she stared a wolf in the eyes and was paralysed. But then the beast had taken a step closer and she was gone. Gone like a rabbit. She could hear the wolf behind her. Its large body thumped the ground as it pursued her. The beast was faster than she could ever hope to be and passed her in seconds. As it rounded on her she turned as quick as her body would allow and fled in the opposite direction. 

The forest had fallen silent, no singing, not even a ‘shsshshshssh,’ just thump thump thump. The wolf rounded on her again, mocking her like a cat playing with a mouse. She let out a frightened squeal and almost fell as she leapt to the right and sprinted off again.  

“Lile, stop. He won’t hurt you,” Gren called to her like an echo through the mountains. But she didn’t understand. Didn’t understand his surety. Didn’t understand his earnestness. She was about to die. That was all she understood. 

Suddenly, the wolf was in front of her. It snarled sharply stopping her in her tracks. She fell backwards with a yelp. The wolf jumped on her, pinning her to the ground under heavy paws. Lile screamed and burst into tears. 

 “Maeve!” she screamed in desperate futility. “Maeve, help!” The wolf sniffed her, rubbing its nose in her face. Its hot breath filled her nostrils and mouth. It smelt of raw meat. The smell of her death. She whimpered and howled, unable to do a thing to save herself. The wolf let out a loud drawn-out whine and then started licking. Its hot tongue tasted her eyes, ears, and mouth. But it wasn’t eating her. It just licked. It whined again and rolled off Lile onto its back. Then it tossed and turned whining and grunting along the forest floor. Lile lay paralysed. Her eyes, wide with terror, followed the wolf as it wriggled around her. 

She remained heavy on the ground like a corpse while the wolf explored the earth like a toddler. On its back, it shuffled along picking up, in its mouth, whatever loose stick, stone or bone it could find and playfully tossing it in the air. Occasionally it would roll up onto its belly and pause to look at her, then it would return to sweeping the ground with its backside. Lile's tears had stopped flowing though her heart was still pounding. The wolf hadn't eaten her, had barely hurt her and now it was playing.

"I told you it doesn't want to hurt you," Gren said in her ear. 

"Then why did it chase me?" she whispered.

"You were playing a game."

"I was not!" Lile choked, fresh tears filling her eyes. She had thought she was going to die. And even if the wolf only wanted to play, it was big and brutish and therefore dangerous. "I want to leave," she told Gren. 

"Then leave."

"What if it chases me again?"

"Don't run, and it won't chase you," Gren said. Lile considered this advice. Doing as little as possible to encourage the wolf probably was the best course of action. She slowly got up off the ground, trying not to alarm or excite the beast. It rolled onto its belly once again and watched her with bright yellow eyes. Its mouth was wide open in a content pant. It looked no different than a dog. A huge dog. All the descriptions of wolves she had heard had never done justice to their size. Standing, its head must have been equal with her chest. She backed away slowing, keeping half an eye on the wolf as she peered around her searching for the way back. A chill ran down her spine as it occurred to her that she had no idea where she was. She had run into the forest and gotten utterly lost. "Gren," she whispered. I don't know the way back."

"I do," he replied.

"Ok, that's great," she said evenly. "Mind showing me?" At that moment, the wolf, who had been watching her keenly got up and bounded toward her. She froze, not daring to run for fear of being chased again. But it paused only for a brief moment to sniff her before it trotted off into the forest. She exhaled the breath she had been holding and watched it wind its way through the trees. 

"Right Gren, the way back, please." Lile really hadn't run far before the wolf had caught her and it wasn't long before she was standing next to Besnik the tree again. Hadn't she made an odd collection of friends today? An invisible forest spirit, a tree and a wolf? She hoped. She didn't like wolves but if she had to choose, she'd prefer to be one's friend than one's dinner. She found the knife that she had dropped after being startled by Besnik and Gren. She held it in her hand, ready, just in case. 

The wolf continued to wander the forest around her. It stayed nearby, mostly in sight, with its nose to the ground, exploring all the smells of the forest. She could feel her heart slowing and the warmth coming back to her body. She was alright. She was going to be alright. 

"I still need to find millow and cleow" she said, hoping Gren was still around. But it was Besnik, not Gren who answered. The bahl tree let out a low whistle that became two notes dancing around each other. To her left, Lile heard another bahl tree pick up the same two-note tune. These two trees sang alone. A message? she wondered. Curious, she picked her sack off the ground and followed the tune to the second tree. Once she had found it, a third tree began singing the same tune. Again she followed the tune until she had found the third tree. Yet another tree began to sing a little way ahead. But the fourth tree sang a slightly different tune, three notes, higher and faster than that of the first three. 

When she came to the tree she realized why it sang a new song. Near the base of the bahl tree lay a fallen bone tree, and out from that bone tree grew millow. Lile gasped and thanked the tree earnestly. In response, a group of bahl trees began to sing a more complex, but pleasant tune. It was the bahl trees, she realised, that sang. Only them. 

She was cutting the millow from the decaying tree trunk when the wolf reappeared. She saw him, out of the corner of her eye, sniffing the bahl tree that had located the millow for her. She took a deep breath as the wolf came closer to her. It sniffed the millow in her hand and then sneezed all over her.

"Well," Lile said, wiping wolf snot off her face. "I won't be using this in my tea." She felt wasteful casting the sullied millow aside and went as far as to apologize to it. She picked at another flower. "Noooo," she warned the wolf in a low voice as it tried to sniff her new handful of millow. "Not again," she said. 

The wolf whined a little and began digging a hole under the fallen tree. It really is just a dog, Lile thought to herself. She now had two ingredients. 

Two ingredients that she had found before. The last would be trickier. Old Maeve had never shown her where to find cleow and though she had seen the tubers before in Maeve's hut, she had no idea what the plant looked like. The trees were still singing their happy tune, but she needed their assistance again. 

"Alright, alright, if you could all quieten down for a moment," she said. The trees stopped singing. The millow finder let out a low whistling sound. "Thank you for helping me find the millow." The tree began singing again. "No, no. Stop, wait," Lile laughed. These trees were like children, the wolf, like a puppy. This eerie forest was nothing but the goddess' own nursery. This was the strangest day of her life. "Listen," she said, "I need to find cleow. Can you help me find cleow?" 

The tree sang the same two-note tune that she had heard before. It was quickly picked up by another tree and Lile began the search, following the tune, tree by tree. It took longer, a few more than just four trees until she found one singing a different song, signifying that cleow was nearby. Excitement and joy rushed down her spine causing her to tremble slightly and grin stupidly. This was working a treat. She could talk to trees and they seemed to like her. But she still didn't know what cleow looked like and there was a range of different plants growing in the shade of the trees. 

"Gren?" she asked the air. There was no reply. It seemed the spirit had left her. And, she looked around, so had the wolf. Or maybe she had left it. It was digging the last time she saw it. The beast, she could do without, but what was she supposed to do without her tree interpreter? 

"Thank you for helping me," she said turning to the tree as though eye contact between human and tree were achievable. "I don't know what cleow looks like. Could you help me? Maybe a game of hot or cold?" She paused to think for a moment and quickly formulated a plan. "Alright, if I am close to the right plant sing 'laaah,'" she sang a single high note. The tree echoed her with its own whistling voice. "And if I'm walking away from the correct plant sing 'laaah.'" This time she sang a much lower note which the tree sang back to her. This plan could work. 

Lile began to walk around the tree but is sang a low note. She had started in the wrong direction. So she backed up, walking away from the tree slowly. It sang the high note. She stepped to the left, high again. She walked to the left and eventually hit a low note. She kept backing up high, high, high, low. Walk forward, 'laa la la la laa', right there. By her feet was a creeping plant with long spindly, purple vines that lay along the forest floor. It had lovely bright green hastate leaves - Old Maeve had been teaching her the names of different leaf shapes - that contrast beautifully with the rich purple. She felt cruel for wanting to rip it out of the ground. She was after the tubers, not just a few leaves or flowers. But she had recently acquired an acute awareness of the life of plants on account of them now communicating with her. And they were not merely alive they were, at least some of them, sentient. 

"I'm sorry little one," she said, kneeling by the cleow and stroking one of its leaves. For a moment she thought she could feel it tremble in her hand. 

"It understands," Gren echoed beside her. Lile jumped and cursed. 

"Don't sneak up on me like that!"

"I've been sitting here as long as you have!" the spirit whined. "It's not my fault that you are blind." 

"If you know that I'm blind then you should be more considerate and change your behaviour accordingly." Can't you do that wind blowing sound you make when you come around so that I know that you are here?"

"I'm making that wind blowing sound now. While. I'm. Talking. That's just my voice."

"Huh? But that's not what I'm hearing. You're speaking. You're saying words." 

"When you're mind was closed you heard nothing. Then you were surrounded by magic and it pressed against the walls of your mind and you could hear but not perceive. You heard me as wind and the songs of the trees as chattering. Then the Lady of Forest opened your mind and now you can perceive." So here was the wise Gren that Old Maeve had spoken of. But his explanation merely added questions to Lile's ever-growing pile. 

"The Lady of the Forest opened my mind?" This was an overwhelming thought, that the deity herself had actually intervened in her training. Of course, she had prayed for such assistance ever since she had arrived, but to hear from the mouth of a spirit that her prayers had been both heard and answered was, well, overwhelming. 

"Yes," Gren replied curtly. 

"So why can't I see?" She wasn't ungrateful, she dared not be, just curious. 

"You are not permitted to see."

"Not permitted? But Maeve can see and hear. How can I be a wise woman like her if I cannot see?"

"Is it not getting dark? If you do not return home soon magic will not be the only thing that you cannot see. Even the trees cannot help you if you are completely blind." And here was the Gren who avoided tough questions. The dismissal hurt, perhaps more than the knowledge that the Lady of the Forest, while aiding her in her endeavours, had also placed limitations on what she could accomplish. Yes, not knowing 'why' hurt more than knowing 'what.' It was getting dark and Lile needed to go home, but she had one more question. 

"The cleow understands?" she asked Gren.  

"Yes," Gren said. "It understands that you have to eat. It isn't afraid."

"Oh." Lile's stomach knotted. She looked at the plant with its beautiful creeping vines. "I don't really need to eat it. It was just to help me with magic. We don't even really need to drink tea. It's just flavoured water. Besides, the Basamortan's invented it, so if I never drank tea again, I wouldn't be sad."

"No, you should keep drinking your tea. You need to get stronger."

"Stronger?"

"It is getting dark, Lile." 

Lile sighed and dug her fingers into the earth around the base of the cleow. She wondered if she could pull it out, or if she would need to dig at it. She had no digging tools. She tugged and some of the vines snapped off in her hands which made her feel awful. Poor cleow. She began digging with her fingers. Her nails quickly filled with dirt as she scraped her way lower and lower into the soil. The earth was cold and hard and progress was slow. It was to her great relief then, when a nose suddenly appeared in her face, sniffing excitedly. 

The wolf sniffed her dirt-covered hands, the cleow, the ground and quickly picked up the idea. It began to dig, its powerful paws tossing showers of dirt behind it. It whined with excitement as its hole grew larger and larger. It had no real understanding of what they were after, but a hole is a hole and a dog is a dog and those two things simply go together. Girl and wolf didn't go together quite as well, but they seemed to be making the relationship work. Together they excavated the cleow, roots, tubers and all. Under the earth, the plant was far more substantial than she expected. She counted seven tubers. "Will they grow if I plant them?" she asked Gren. 

"Yes. They are the offspring."

"Well, we need not be greedy." With her knife Lile cut the vines off the tubers, selected the two largest and then returned the rest to the hole, though the wolf grabbed one and scurried off with it, chomping its jaws around the swollen stem as it went. That left Lile to refill the hole undisturbed. She pushed as much dirt as she could back into the small pit with her feet and patted it flat. Then, satisfied with her efforts, and with water gorn, millow and cleow safely stored in her bag, she asked the trees to lead her home. They did so, singing their two-note tune until she was back at the edge of the clearing. As she stepped over the invisible magic barrier the trees broke into song, not a sad song, but a cheerful one. One that celebrated companionship. Maeve stepped out of the cabin and greeted both her and Gren, who was with her, though she could not see him. The wolf ran past into the clearing, unphased by the protective enchantment, chomping on cleow. Maeve did not look as surprised as she ought to, but rather, beamed at him and then at Lile. 

"You've been making friends," she observed as Lile arrived at the cabin. 

"More than I can count," Lile replied considering all the trees, "and only three that I can name. There's Besnik," she said holding up one finger, "and Gren...sort of." She held up her little finger to demonstrate a lesser friendship to the first. 

"Hey!" Gren cried, "I helped you so much. I am a much better friend than Besnik. You wouldn't even know his name if I didn't tell you. I am a very good friend."

"Oh alright," Lile let out a mock sigh. "You are my friend, but you are also Maeve's friend, so you can't be my closest friend."

"Who is your closest friend?"

"Cleow is."

"The vegetable?" Gren roared and she thought she could actually hear him swoop around her head. 

"No, the wolf. I've named him Cleow." 

"Oh," was all Gren said. 

Lile, Maeve, and presumably Gren, watched Cleow as he dashed around the clearing, tuber still in mouth, having a little one-wolf party, surrounded by singing trees. An odd collection of friends indeed, Lile thought to herself as she left the scene to make some hot tea.