Prologue
It was nearly moondark and the Antipodean sun dangled, as usual, above the horizon, never changing its position. The rising moon was about to eclipse our stationary sun, having reduced it to a crescent in the sky, plunging the land into lowlight.
It was the end of the moon’s daily walk around Antipodean. I stood with my student, Stekr, whose short, plump body was becoming shadowy in the dimming light.
Rocky Point was Stekr’s favorite place to watch the darkness come across our land. Being an apprentice leaf cutter, the silhouettes of the gigantic rubrum trees excited him. Extending one of his two tentacle arms, a bulbous palm and solitary finger at the end, he singled out a five-pointed leaf.
“Look, ‘Teller! That leaf on the cliff! It’s the finest in the valley! Someday I’ll cut it and build a room for the king!”
I strained to see. Eyes provide the weakest sense we have. “Rocky Point is the most hazardous cliff in the Valley of the Flameheads, Stekr. Valiant dreams for a boy who has only seen 58 dances of the moon!”
“Nothing’s too hard, if it would serve King Kalar,” Stekr said. He walked up to a rubrum tree and drew in a deep breath through his big, round, porous nose. Absorbing the odors, he asked, “Isn’t it the best smell ever?”
I closed my eyes and grimaced at the pungent odor which appeals mainly to the rubrum leaf cutters in the community.
By now the sun was only a curved sliver in the sky. The shadow cast by the moon raced across the ground. I shouted, “Look, Stekr, here it comes!” With tentacles entwined, we watched the wall of darkness advance, a thousand strides away, seven hundred strides, three hundred. The shadow of moondark was the fastest moving thing any flamehead had ever seen, and despite the fact that it occurred every walk of the moon, the excitement never ceased, at least not for Stekr and me.
“I’m going to watch it with my eyes open this time, ‘Teller!” Stekr shouted. But his eyes slammed shut as the darkness rushed over his face like a tidal wave.
Stekr clapped and squealed with delight.
We turned and watched the darkness chase away the remaining light until the entire valley was draped in lowlight. Then we sat down under the gnarled rubrum tree and watched the huge black moon backlit by the sun. The air cooled with moondark, and we wrapped up in a blanket I had brought.
“’Teller,” Stekr said, “tell me again why moondark happens.” With a flick of his neck, the point of his earless head flopped toward me so he could hear more clearly.
I shifted a bit to get comfortable and began the old account of the legend of the Dismal Swamp, which was told and retold to young flameheads so they would know it well.
“Because the sun doesn’t move in the sky, half of Antipodean dwells in darkness and is known as the Dismal Swamp. Evil creatures live there. The other half, where we live, is called the Land of the Morning Star.”
Stekr interrupted. “What’s ‘evil’?”
“Think of a time when you were very sad.”
“When Papa fell from Rocky Point and died,” Stekr said.
“Evil is a thousand times more lonely than how you feel about your papa. It is hard to understand because since the creation of Antipodean, evil has been locked up in the Dismal Swamp, contained within an opaque wall of mist. Flameheads live in peace with each other, and are basically happy. The Dismal Swamp holds all that is not at peace, and every feeling that is unhappy.
“It is a mystery that I hope you never learn about first-hand,” I added. “And you never will, as long as no flamehead ever crosses the border and goes into the Dismal Swamp. You see, little one, evil stays locked up on that condition.”
Stekr cocked his head and pursued, “But why would anyone want to go there?”
“I don’t know why anyone would ever want to go into the black abyss of the Dismal Swamp. No one ever has, and I hope no one ever will.”
“The moon goes there all the time, ‘Teller!” Stekr pointed out.
“You’re right. And that’s why moondark happens. As soon as the moon returns from the Dismal Swamp, it must be burned clean. The hot sun blackens the evil that gathered on the moon, and when the evil is all destroyed, the moon continues its journey across the sky, constantly reminding us of the legend of the Dismal Swamp—and why we must never break its borders.”
“I’d sooner risk Rocky Point than the Dismal Swamp!” Stekr wrapped his tentacle around his hearing sensor and squeezed, to emphasize his point.
I continued, “As the moon begins to uncover the sun again, for a brief moment the Morning Star appears to the left of the sun. It is our sign of hope.
“The Morning Star has special meaning for me, Stekr, as it did for all the healers in my ancestry. My mother and grandmother both passed on to me a respect for the power the Morning Star holds.”
“What power is that?” Stekr rubbed his tiny red eyes.
“The power of wholeness. The gift of healing which I possess is enhanced when I unite my own serenity and love with the power of the Morning Star.”
We rested in silence for a time before I returned Stekr to his mother. Then, in the lowlight, I ambled to the north side of the Valley of the Flameheads and settled into my one-leaf abode, in the center of the Forest of Wisdom.
© Mary Lee Bensman 2006
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