Mead for the Moon – A Mythic Fantasy Short Story of Moonlight, Memory, and Magic

The moon was gone again, stolen like last time, and the milk had turned to salt. I already knew who had done it. Ach! Every hundred years or so, almost like clockwork. You’d think he’d have learned his lesson.

I picked up the keys, my phone and wallet (always handy in case the cops show up), and poured an insulated water bottle with some homemade mead spiced with rosemary and rue.–It was what I had on hand at the time. Out of my tiny apartment in an old, small-town Opera House and into the too-dark night.

The crickets sang and the breeze was unsure of itself, whether it wanted to be warm or cool, damp or dry. April in Iowa, go figure. The air smelled of mushrooms and coffee grounds and my keys jingled against the metal water bottle.

Off I went.

Past clapboard houses with people sitting on their porches and staring up at the sky, too shocked to notice me, past where the sidewalks ended, past the rusty barbed-wire fence at the edge of the fields.

Out into the fireflies.

“Nijinsky!” I held up the keys and jingled them in lieu of silver bells. “Come on, where are you?”

Have I said how dark the night was? The Milky Way banded above our heads.

A groan from the wheat out in the field, a place where the fireflies could not dance, a large shadow mounded against the stars.

A low, rumbling voice, so enormous that it made my chest ache without being the least bit loud, precisely, asked, “Tarantella? Is that you? How did you know I was here already? I thought you were dead. A long time ago.”

I walked closer. His body radiated a comfortable coolness, with a wild smell, fresh green growth mixed with old bones and leafmold. When he was within arm’s reach, I dug my free hand into his fur and started scratching along his spine. He groaned and thumped an enormous long foot on the ground in pleasure.

“Never mind how I found you,” I said. “They’re all panicked down there, for one thing, and for another thing, my cheese is all ruined. Some of it I’ve been aging for six months now!”

Nijinsky groaned.

“Can’t a rabbit take a night off every once in a while?”

“Hm…” I said. “I’m the wrong person to ask. All I have is this bottle of spiced mead. Too bad you’re so big, or I’d share it with you. You’d barely even taste it.”

Nijinsky snorted. “I know what you’re trying to do. You’re trying to make me shrink so the humans don’t find me out in their field again.”

“You are crushing their crops,” I pointed out.

“Not important. Tarantella, oh, you don’t know how I’ve suffered…”

I shrugged and straightened up, then brushed some wheat chaff off my pajama pants. “You could drink with me tonight and tell me all about it.”

“Hmph.”

I shrugged. “Well, I’ve come outside to check on you, and you seem like you’re not going to be any trouble this time, so I’ll be going now.”

“Wait!”

The giant moon-rabbit vanished, shifting the breeze with a sudden gust that ruffled my hair and made me rock on my feet.

He reappeared as a large hare, about the size of an unruly toddler, with mottled gray fur. I took the cap off my bottle and poured a little mead out for him to taste–but not enough to satisfy.

“Hm. That’s good, Tarantella.”

“Only so-so. I’ve been running out of inspiration. I could use some advice on what to try next.”

Nijinsky sighed, and hopped over to my leg, and leaned against it. “All right. But I’m going to stay the night. I won’t leave until morning. No matter what you say.”

“I wasn’t about to suggest anything less,” I assured him. “The humans can stand a little mystery now and then. But in return you’ll have to turn my cheese back into cheese. No more of this salt business.”

Every time the rabbit in the moon was disappointed in love, he ended up in my back yard. Didn’t matter where I was: in Botswana, in Hong Kong, in a small town in Iowa.

I picked him up and put him on my shoulder for the walk home. A hundred years had gone by since last I’d seen him, but he was an old friend. And while we drank mead and got caught up with our tales (and nibbled on cheese) it was as though no time had passed.

A new moon on the wrong night but a friendship well in season.