The Next Full Moon (16 page)

Ava shook her head and placed the mugs and cookie tin onto one of the big silver trays on the counter, then followed her grandmother into the living room.

“So, honey,” her grandmother said, settling into her rocking chair and tapping the coffee table, indicating where
Ava should set the tray, “tell me what's going on with you.”

“Umm.” She didn't know where to start, or what to start
with
. It was totally weird to be here like this with her grandmother acting like everything was normal. “A lot.”

“Well, why don't we start with the swan maidens?”

Ava had just taken a huge bite of Snickerdoodle and immediately spit it out. Crumbs spewed over the table and over the carpet.

“Oh my!” her grandmother said. “Are you okay, dear?”

“Yes,” Ava gasped, choking a little still. She coughed. There was cookie stuck in her throat.

“Take a sip of your cocoa.”

Ava obeyed, letting the warm chocolate run over her tongue and down her throat. There was wet, chewed-up cookie on her nightshirt, she saw, and she plucked it off and set it on the table. “What did you say, Grandma?” she managed to get out.

“To take a sip of cocoa, dear.”

“No
before
that.”

“Oh, that we should start with the swan maidens.”

“The swan . . .” Ava was too shocked to finish. She just stared at her sweet old grandmother, who was rocking innocently back and forth as if it were normal for her granddaughter to show up in her pajamas past midnight on a school night, as if there was nothing wrong at all with serving said granddaughter cocoa and casually asking her about swan maidens.

“They have come to you already, haven't they?”

“Yes.”

Her grandmother nodded. “Good. It's about time. They couldn't before now, you know, so don't be upset with them.”

“But . . . I don't understand. You know about them?”

“Yes, honey.”

“You know about my mother?”

Grandma Kay sighed. “As soon as your father came home and told me he'd fallen in love with a swan maiden, I knew it would end up in tears and heartbreak. Swan maidens are not meant to mate with humans. Humans are not meant to mate with them.” She sighed again, more heavily this time, as she reached for her lemon water and took a loud sip. “But he refused to listen to me. He was in love, he said. As if it were that simple.” She shook her head. “I should have known it would happen, with the amount of time your father spent down at that creek.”

“I can't believe you've known all this time, Grandma! Why didn't you tell me?”

She gave Ava a sad, concerned look. “You can't tell a child something like that. We had to wait until you were old enough for them to come to you themselves, so you could understand. How do you tell a three-year-old that her mother is a swan? We didn't want you to think your mother had left you on purpose. And what if we told you and then you left to find them and never came back? Think of your father. He is
terrified you will leave him one day, too.”

“But . . . my mother
did
leave me on purpose. Didn't she?”

“Oh honey, no. No no no. She loved you so much, Ava. She would have stayed with you and your father forever if she could have.”

“Then why didn't she? And I can't believe . . . I thought he didn't know! Why . . . How could neither of you have told me the truth? About my mother, about me!” Ava burst into tears. One minute she was sitting there in shock, the next tears were streaming down her cheeks. Thank goodness her grandmother was nearly blind. Ava hated to cry in front of anyone, especially her evil secret-keeping grandmother.
She had known!!

“Ava, Ava,” her grandmother comforted, trying to hoist herself out of her rocking chair now.

“Stay there,” Ava said. “Don't hurt yourself.”

“Your grandfather told me I had to be careful, talking to you about this stuff. Oh, I wish he could tell you himself. I think your father was waiting for the full moon, to be sure. He's so scared, Ava. He worries so much about you. And then you got sick and everything . . .”

“Grandma, I don't understand anything you're saying! Why did my mother have to leave?”

Her grandmother took another sip of her water, and set it down. “Let me start at the beginning,” she said. “You deserve to know all of this. You poor girl, you must be so confused.”

“Yes!” Ava was sitting on the edge of the chair now. Waiting. “Hello! Of course I'm confused, thanks to you and Dad! Now please, Grandma, tell me what's going on!”

“Well, this, here, this valley,” her grandmother began, “has always been a popular spot with swan maidens. Not everyone will admit that they're here, but why else do we have all these swans lurking around? Not everyone's seen a maiden that they knew of, and fewer still have seen one make the change . . . but”—she leaned forward—“my own great-grandmother used to tell me stories about them. And I always knew they weren't just stories.”

Ava had plenty to say but forced herself to keep her mouth shut and let her grandmother talk, even if she was taking
far
longer than Ava would have liked. She couldn't beLIEVE her grandmother had known all of this, this whole time, and not said anything at all!!

“I never told your father those stories, though,” she said. “I'm not sure why. I guess I didn't want to scare him, though maybe a little scaring would have done him some good, kept him out of those darn woods and away from that creek. But oh boy, as soon as your grandpa put a rod in your daddy's hand that first time, he was hooked.” Ava's grandmother stopped and slapped her knee. “Hooked! Get it?”

“Grandma!”

“Okay, okay. So yes, your father has always been a fisherman. We do have the best trout fishing in the world
right here, some say. But why the swan maidens had to come down the exact moment they did, I don't know. Plenty of the men around here have fished these waters their whole lives and never caught sight of one. But your father. Well, one evening he was out there all by his lonesome—he always was a little bit solitary, even as a young thing—when he looked up and saw three swans fall from the sky and to the side of that creek and turn into maidens right there smack dab in front of him.” She shook her head, letting out yet another dramatic sigh. “What's a young man to do? He'd seen a miracle, and your mother might as well have thrown an arrow straight from her own hands and through to his heart. He told me all this later, of course, but I knew when he came home that day that something had happened to him. You could reach out and
smack
the spell that had come over him. Your grandfather didn't see it, of course, but I guess I've always been a little
touched
.”

“So what happened? How did they end up together?”

“Well. Your father watched those swan maidens swimming, but really he had eyes only for your mother, not her friends. And he sat there watching them until they changed back and flew away.”

“She left?”

“Yes, but he waited for her to come back. Waited and waited, with all the patience in the world, which love will give you, hiding behind a tree alongside the bank he knew the
maidens would return to. And then they did.”

“And then what?” Ava asked breathlessly.

“He stole her robe.”

“He
what
?”

“He watched to see which robe was hers, and then he took it when they were in the water. When your mother and her friends emerged, her friends put on their robes and flew away, and your mother was stranded there.”

Ava's mouth dropped open. How could he have done such a thing? Her sweet, goofy, handsome father!

“Don't judge him too harshly, Ava. He was in love, and love will make you crazy. It was the only way he could have been with her. And he would have given the robe back to her—he wouldn't have forced her to stay against her will—but she fell in love with him, too.”

“But he tricked her!”

“Well, by the time she knew that, it was too late. And I doubt she would have cared. She was as crazy as he was! Some couples are like that, you know. Just madly, crazy in love with each other, no matter what. They don't care a thing for reason and have no sense at all.”

“So she was just standing there, with no robe?”

“Yes. And he came out and took care of her, put his jacket around her and took her home. It was a full moon that night, of course. She was not meant to stay in human form any longer than that, but then she was trapped. But happy
to be trapped, that's the thing. Your mother and father were very, very in love, Ava. And then they were married, and then they had you. I knew it couldn't end happily and I tried to warn him, but your father would have none of it.”

“So what happened then? Why did she leave?”

“Oh honey. She grew ill. Your father took her to doctor after doctor, but no one could figure out what was wrong with her. She got thinner and thinner and took to her bed . . . Your father had to care for you, and I would come over and take care of you when he was off teaching, while your mother sat watching you, too weak to hold you—it made her so sad, not being able to hold you—and then one day your father brought out that robe, which he'd hidden away in the attic. He didn't realize what he was doing, he was just desperate for her to get better. And the moment he showed her that robe? Well, she had no choice but to put it on, and next thing your father knew your mother was a swan again, the way she'd been the very first time he saw her.”

“She had no choice?”

“She was dying, Ava. She was not supposed to be a human. Swan maidens can change in the full moon, but that's it. They're meant to be swans.”

“Is that . . .” A realization started to hit, and Ava felt like the whole world was shifting to its side and staying there. “Is that why he goes to the creek? On nights of the full moon?
Is he . . .”

“Yes,” Grandma Kay said, her blue eyes glowing in the dim room. “He goes to see her.”

Ava paused, thinking. “And so that day? She just turned into a swan and flew away?”

“Yes. The moment she put on that robe, she was herself again.”

“He just let her go like that?”

“He had to, honey. She was never meant to stay. She stayed longer than she ever should have, and she would have stayed until she died if it had been up to her. Because of you.”

“Because of me,” Ava repeated.

She sat back, imagining all of it, feeling that warm moon inside her grow bigger and bigger. Her grandmother was tired now, she could see. She had been expecting her, hadn't she? Ava smiled as Grandma Kay's eyes fluttered shut, and then open again. It was so late! Ava herself would be exhausted the next day in school, and she had not one but two tests. They were easy ones, though, language arts and world history, and besides, what did tests matter now? There were only two days left of school, her birthday was in one week, and now she knew exactly what she was going to ask her father to give her. It would be the best birthday—and the best birthday present—ever.

As she flew home, her mind whirled with everything her grandmother had told her. She couldn't believe it, how beautiful and sad it all was—and that all the weird, freaky things that had been happening to her were all part of such a romantic story. Her cool, crazy dad, in love with a swan maiden, visiting with her mother under every full moon. At the same time, Ava felt such loss, thinking of all those nights that they sat together while she slept at home in bed, aching for a mother who was just minutes away.

Her mother! How terrible it must have been for her, to leave her husband and her child. And yet, she'd given up flight and her own beautiful world to be with them in the first place.

It was all so unfair!

And underneath it all, a thought niggled at Ava, a fear that started as a thin sliver and began to grow.

What if she, too, had to leave one day? Would she? Would she grow sick one day if she spent too much time in one world and not the other?

She remembered what Helen had said: “You can be one of them, and you can be one of us, too. Very few have the freedom to straddle two worlds. One day you will choose, but that is not for a long time yet.” Is that what she had meant? And her grandmother, what had she said? That her father was terrified that Ava would leave him one day, too?

Ava's house appeared below her. She dropped down to
the edge of the woods behind it and reached back to pull off the robe, which came off in her hand.

If her mother's natural form was a swan, and staying in her human form for so long had made her sick . . . could that happen to Ava one day, too?

Carrying her feathered robe, she stepped into the backyard.

“Ava?”

The voice startled her, seemed to come out of the night air.

She froze.

Her eyes adjusted to the dark, her heart pounding. Had someone seen her transform?

She stood for a moment, listening, but the voice was silent.

Maybe she'd imagined it?

The robe in her arms was white and glittering. In a quick movement, she flung it behind her, back into the woods.

She took a deep breath and stepped forward. “Hello?” she whispered.

“What are you doing out here?” the voice said.

It was Jeff. Standing under the tree by her window, his cell phone in his hands. He looked up at the sky, and then back down at her.