The Towers, the Moon

Death and the Moon

Eluned Tenning had not expected the trip to France to cure her sister of heart-sickness, but she’d hoped it would buoy her spirits. And that first night in Lutèce – when they had revelled in the wonders of the Towers, and then had a dawn adventure – Eleri had sparked up as any person would.

But it never lasted. Even though they had gone to a dozen museums and galleries full of things that Eleri usually found fascinating, Eluned’s sister had barely seemed to be attending. She had dealt with their mass of cousins with distracted politeness, and had not cared about the sudden rearrangement of their plans so their Aunt could visit the Gilded Court. Not even the news of the disappearance of the Princess Royal had caught her interest.

Eluned had tried not to be impatient. It wasn’t Eleri’s fault she had fallen in love, or that her heart had decided on someone they’d be lucky to meet again, even at the same school. But it was hard not to wish that her sister would just get over it.

On the evening before they were due to return to Prytennia, Eleri settled down after dinner to stare out their hotel room window, and rather than show her frustration, Eluned escaped downstairs to look for a more interesting way to spend the last little bit of the visit to France. In the family-run Hotel Lourien, she almost inevitably would encounter a cousin, and she rather hoped it would be cousin Lotti, who was the most bouncing, cheerful girl Eluned had ever met.

If she had not been so determined to hide her impatience, Eluned would probably not have gone downstairs alone. She had met more than one cousin who was not so enjoyable to talk to as Lotti, and if she happened across cousin Emile, she could not be certain cousin Antoine would arrive a second time to rescue her from that too-friendly arm around her waist.

Thankfully, in the storeroom staff used to take breaks she found one of the younger cousins, Milo, memorising lines for an Aquitanian play, and happily agreed to help him rehearse for the Latin performances.

Eluned had only known Milo a few days, and thought him obliging, hard-working and kind, but he had not stolen all her thoughts, and did not make her want to blush whenever he was around, let alone spend all her time morosely staring at nothing. Even so, she did not move away when Milo’s demonstration of how actors faked kisses on stage somehow turned into a not at all pretend kiss.

It tingled to touch someone’s tongue with your own. No-one had ever mentioned that. Surprise made Eluned go still.

Milo immediately lifted his head, gave her a concerned look, and said: "Too far?"

"It’s all right." Eluned’s voice was satisfactorily calm. "It was just different to what I expected."

"You didn’t expect me to be so rude as to not ask properly first," Milo said, but then offered her a smile that lit up his odd, angular face. "But me, I am not sorry I was rude, if you are not."

"I’m not," Eluned said, which was true, then added daringly: "At my last school it was such a big thing, to know what kissing was like. I always felt stupid."

"And so you plan to enact a transformation sequence? You shall return to your Prytennia a sophisticate."

Eluned doubted that very much, but she thought that she would be glad, at her new school, to be a person who had at least glimpsed the answer to certain mysteries, even if she still did not properly understand them. All of the descriptions of kissing she had ever read had talked in grand phrases: of being swept away, transported, transfigured. But she was still just Eluned, in a storeroom, with a cousin she had only started to get to know.

"Do you think Tesaire really loves this woman he calls the Queen?" she asked, reaching for the reason they had been talking about kissing in the first place.

Milo’s play, Death and the Moon, was all about a French conscript in the old Roman Empire’s armies. It was full of harsh army discipline, battles with Hellenic rebels, and a mysterious woman whom Milo’s character, Tesaire, meets at night.

"There’s nothing in the script to suggest his love isn’t true," Milo said. "Why do you think it?"

"He’s only spoken to her a couple of times. He doesn’t know anything about her other than she spends a lot of time staring up at the moon."

"He knows she is beautiful," Milo said. "For some, that is enough."

"But she could be horrid! She won’t even tell him her name! And when he warns her his commander is planning to attack the whole district where the rebels are based, all she does is lecture him."

"Because he says he wants to act, to help the Hellenes, for her," Milo said, and then stepped back and spoke in a voice both compassionate and disapproving:

"My poor boy. Do you think to barter for my affection? Wherever the Fates take you, what point in arriving as anything but your truest self?"

Eluned blinked, because even though the words were the same she had read to him a short while ago, Milo had somehow made the Queen a much better person. Eluned had read her as ungrateful, but Milo had made her wise.

"That’s a little like magic," she said. "I couldn’t begin to sound so grand."

"It is not so mysterious," Milo said, laughing. "Here." He pulled a low crate out from beneath one of the shelves. "Climb up on this. Yes, and now stand very straight – no, put your shoulders back and try and make your neck long."

Eluned obeyed, feeling silly, but he smiled at her encouragingly.

"Now. You are a woman of power, of consequence, and this boy – this puppy – has come to you and asked you to give him a reason. To be his justification. You do not dislike the boy, but you will not be his excuse. So you say…"

"My…my poor boy…" Eluned faltered, and felt stupid.

"Deep breath," Milo said. "Keep your neck long, even as you look down at me."

"My poor boy," Eluned said again, and was surprised at the way the words rang out. "Do you think to barter for my affection? Wherever the Fates take you, what point in arriving as anything but your truest self?"

"There." Milo beamed up at her. "That is acting. More than words. Being."

"I think I see," Eluned said.

"The Queen – ah, I am so lucky that Sophia Nokoto is to play her. Because, more than beauty, the Queen must have gravitas. It is entirely understandable that Tesaire has fallen in love with her, for she is a being of such power, such aura, that it is impossible to see her and do anything else."

Eluned, who had once met a god with plenty of power and aura, did not really agree. Of course, that god had been a deer, most of the time, and quite scary.

"This is important to you somehow, I think," Milo said, unexpectedly. "Why Tesaire loves the Queen."

"I…not really. Not Tesaire." Eluned hesitated, but forged on, because Milo was only a little older, and kind. "My sister, Eleri, she met someone recently. Only once, and they didn’t even talk directly, but Eleri hasn’t thought of anyone else since. It’s like she’s been enchanted."

"Le élixir d’amour," Milo said, and Eluned more or less understood what that meant, and nodded.

"I have never experienced that," Milo said, "although I have known people who have. One look, and they are pierced to the core. Of course, for some it is a regular event, and comes and goes like the seasons. Others…" He lifted his hands. "For others, one look is a lifetime, a devotion that nothing will shift. Although…perhaps it is possible that eventually all passions wear thin?" He looked pensive. "You disapprove of your sister’s choice, then?"

Eluned shrugged uncomfortably. "It isn’t making her very happy. Have you ever been in love, Milo?"

"Oh, yes. Twice. Both times I have been a Tesaire, a puppy, tolerated by a Queen. Not someone to take seriously. And at times I was angry with myself, because it is not enjoyable to be made a puppy, even by your own heart. But…" He took Eluned’s hands and traced a few steps of a dance around her. "It thrilled even as it hurt, and though it left the shape of itself behind long after it faded, I do not think myself the worse for it."

"Unlike Tesaire," Eluned pointed out. "If he’d never met this Queen, he wouldn’t have ended up dead. Worse, dead as a traitor in Roman territory, so his soul will go to the worst part of the Roman afterlife. All to try to prove himself to someone who doesn’t love him back."

"No, no, I don’t agree with that interpretation at all. The Queen’s words drive Tesaire to prove himself, yes, but only that he is a Frenchman, not a Roman soldier. That he is not someone who will participate in a massacre in the name of the Empire."

"It’s really an awful play," Eluned said, wishing he’d been rehearsing something more cheerful. "Tesaire goes through so much after being conscripted, and tries to do the right thing by sending a warning to the rebels – for whatever reason – but ends up walking into an ambush with the rest of the soldiers. Is the audience supposed to be happy that his Queen shows up and kisses him before he dies?"

"Ah, but we haven’t finished the final scene." Milo collected his script and handed it back to her, then arranged himself into artful collapse at her feet.

"My Queen," he said, gazing up at her with a mix of defiance and pride. "This is the last I look upon you. But I look upon you as Tesaire, a free man of France. Remember me well."

"You will not be forgotten," Eluned promised, remembering to hold herself as he’d taught her. She stepped down from her crate, but was a little flummoxed as to how to kneel beside him in a grand way. Nor was she entirely sure how a Queen would kiss a dying man, but decided that lightly on the lips would do.

Then she had to stop and look at the script, for this was where they’d paused before for lessons on kissing.

"'Tesaire rises'?" she said, reading the pencilled stage directions. "Don’t tell me she’s god-touched with some sort of healing powers?"

"No, no. It is his spirit we see rising," Milo assured her, lifting himself up as he spoke, as if he was being hauled by ropes. "There is to be a mannequin for his body, hastily inserted from under a nearby bit of scenery. The Queen stands as he rises, and perhaps allows him to touch her arm."

He then dropped back into character, and cried out: "Grant me the gift of your name, before I am taken!"

"I have many names," Eluned read. "I am Sister of the Grain. I am the Moon of the Depths. I am Kore of the Shades. I am She Who Destroys Light." Eluned paused, frowning, then read on: "Come, my Tesaire. I have a place for a true and valiant man of France." She lowered the script. "I don’t understand. Is she supposed to be a French god?"

Milo laughed. "No. You might recognise her best-known name. All this time, Tesaire has been talking to Persephone."

"Proserpina?"

"That is beauty of it. Not Proserpina, no matter what the Romans say. Persephone, Queen of the Dead in her own right. A Hellenic god. To say that the gods of the Hellenes are not gods of Rome using different names, that is one thing that annoys Rome more than anything else. That is why the Moon always has at least one performance in Latin. It is a defiance of Rome."

"So he ends up in a Hellenic Otherworld?"

"Yes. And, while being in love is not the reason he chooses to stay true to himself, it does add to his strength, his determination." Milo suddenly covered his face, and then swept his hands back over his hair. "This is such a large role. I was so nervous I was ill outside the theatre when they called me back for a second audition. Thank you for reading with me, Eluned."

They read through the final act again, without interruptions. And then Milo asked her, very politely, if she would like to practice kissing a little more, and Eluned decided that she did. No lightning bolts struck, but it was pleasant enough in its way. She would rather see Milo perform, and was sorry she was not staying in France long enough to watch his debut as Tesaire.

Pondering the mystery of why people found kissing so interesting, Eluned went upstairs to find Eleri still sitting at the window of their room, staring out.

Most of the time, Eluned had to admit, Eleri didn’t visibly mope. She tended to stay more in the background than Eluned was used to, but there was no visible cloud of gloom. Eluned was just aware of her sister’s unhappiness, and hated that she could find no way to make the problem go away.

"We should have a plan," she announced.

Eleri, mind obviously far across the Channel, looked at her slowly.

"For what? Going home tomorrow?"

"For Tangleways. For how we get to meet the Gwyn Lynns again."

Eluned hated herself, then, for the faint shift in Eleri’s expression. For the knowledge that she had been too obviously dismissive of what had happened to her sister when she had seen Celestine Gwyn Lynn.

Even if Eluned didn’t understand how anyone could love someone they had met once, she knew Eleri. Eleri didn’t say things she didn’t mean, and Eluned should have given her sister her trust and support, no matter what. Love might bring Eleri strength, or make her a puppy, or just leave her hurt. Eluned couldn’t change any of that.

But she could be a true sister, and help her find out.