The Man and the Moon

“Daddy?” The thoughts of an aging man were barely perforated by the whispered word. Taking a slow breath of smoky air, the man sitting by a dancing campfire turned to face his daughter. Tree leaves far above her angelic head cast speckled shadows across her tiny frame, and the light from the fire seemed to age her face a few years. He couldn’t help but notice how much she looked like her mother.

The man held out his hand to the child distractedly, his gaze flickering between the stars in her eyes and the stars in the sky. The little girl took a few timid steps across the dying leaves and sat down in his lap. Her bright, blue eyes, framed by tiny wisps of blonde hair, studied the large hand that cradled her own.

“What are you doing up so late, sweetie?” he asked, his voice seeming distant.

The little girl squeezed his hand with her tiny fingers. “I had a bad dream.” A tiny wind blew, like a breath of air, and she shivered. He hugged her close to himself, wrapping his arms around her.

“You know what makes me forget bad dreams?” he asked his daughter.

The little girl shook her head. He turned her in his lap so that he could look her full in the face. His mind had deserted whatever it had been previously occupied with, and now he completely devoted himself to his daughter. “Stories,” he whispered. As if his voice was a sign, the fire gave a crackle, sending tiny bursts of light into the nighttime air.

The girl wrinkled her nose like she had taken a sip of sour milk. “But daddy your stories are always about knights and dragons and kings and boys. I don’t like boys.”

The man tried to hide a smile. “There’s nothing wrong with boys.”

“Ewwww!” the girl said, rocking back and forth in protest. “Boys pick boogers!”

The man laughed now, the traces of a few wrinkles beginning to emerge from his tanned skin. “Alright, what do you want to hear about?”

The girl grinned like she had just received a new doll. “A princess!”

“Ah, princesses…” the man said, watching his daughter’s eyes light up at the word. “So be it…are you ready?” The girl nodded eagerly, curls bouncing around her face as she did so. “You’re not going to fall asleep on me, are you?” She shook her head reverently, almost appalled he would accuse her of such an act. “Alright. Here we go.” He cleared his throat, took a moment to think, and began to stare into the fire. He stared so long the girl thought that he might have forgotten he had promised her a story, but then he opened his mouth and begin to weave pictures for her in the air. She sighed to herself and leaned back into his chest, inhaling the smell of the woods around her and his cologne.

“Once upon a time,” the man began, his eyes growing distant once more as he watched images flash across his mind’s eye, “There was a kingdom in the sky, full of people that floated on clouds and sailed across rainbows to get from one place to another. These sky people were beautiful, tall, and happy, and they had a beautiful king and queen that ruled over them. The queen had skin like light beams that dance in the sun, and sky blue eyes. Her beauty was unmatched by anyone in the kingdom except her own daughter. The queen and the princess had personalities as different from each other as the colors of a rainbow.”

The man paused for a moment, capturing the look of his daughter’s expectant face as she peered up at him in anticipation. The air around them was still, as if it too was waiting for him to begin again and speak of the wonders of the sky kingdom. “Well,” he started after a moment, “The queen’s daughter was extremely curious, and every day she would stare down past the clouds and dream of the land of earth she had heard tales about. You see, the people of the sky were all so beautiful and radiant that if they touched the ground, they would die.”

Slight pressure around his fingers caused the man to stop once more and he glanced down to see his daughter’s fingers clenched around his. “Is this a sad story, daddy?” she asked quietly, eyes downcast.

His heart lurched inside him like someone had tied a string around it and was trying to pull it out of his chest. “You’ll never know if you stop listening…do you want me to stop?”

The grip around his fingers loosened. “No,” she admitted before meeting his eyes once more, a signal for him to continue.

“The princess would ask her mother every day if there was some way she could go to earth, but the queen was afraid that if her daughter went to the world below, she would fall in love and never come back to her home in the sky. She lied and said there was no way.”

The firelight died just a little and the girl asked in a hushed tone, “Was the princess sad?”

“She was very sad. She was so sad, in fact, that every night she would go to her room and cry, and her tears froze in the sky and became stars.” The girl gasped and immediately glanced up in a way that was so cute her father almost forgot his train of thought.

With a small smile, he resumed. “The king soon noticed that the princess was sad, and that there was not a day that went by that she did not stare down at earth in longing. One night, he came to her room without telling the queen and he built the princess a secret door that opened on the surface of earth. If she passed through the door, a magical spell would fall over her and protect her from death on the surface. The king loved his daughter very much, but he (like the queen) was afraid that the princess would leave her home forever once she stepped foot on earth. He told her that the door would only open one time every month, and it would stay open for one full night. If she had not passed through the door before it shut in the morning, she would stay on earth and die when the sun rose.”

“Did she go to earth, daddy?” asked the precious girl, her eyelids closing half an inch.

“She did indeed,” he answered, tucking a stray strand of golden hair behind one of her tiny ears. “She left the first night her magic door opened, and she found herself in a forest. This was very strange to her, for trees did not exist above the clouds in her kingdom. She placed her pale, white hands on the rough bark. She smelled the piney scent of the woods. She walked through the freshly fallen leaves barefoot. She let the wind tickle her skin.” As if to demonstrate, the father blew gently on his daughter’s nose. She let out an innocent giggle.

“She found many things in the forest, but she found one thing she did not expect…a man.” The wind whistled through the tree leaves again, as if to remind him that the whole world was listening to his tale. “What a foolish man he was. He was no more than a mere woodsman, hunting and fishing, and resting by the river. He saw her walking through the trees… so curious and delighted by every little thing she saw, like a child just born and new to life.” The tone of his voice changed slightly, from one of mere recitation to one of recollection.

“He watched her for a while, and as he was a curious man, he began to wonder who she was and why he had never seen her before. He rose up from his resting place beside the river and began to approach her, but in doing so he stepped on a twig that snapped so loudly the princess heard and caught sight of him. She was startled and immediately ran back to her door in the forest, jumped through, and disappeared. When he ran to open the door, it had melted into the trees and was no more.”

Ancient oaks and other wizened trees loomed above and stretched out their limbs in front of him, but the storyteller saw nothing save for the images in his mind. “For the next month, the princess could only think of the earth, and the man in the trees. The woodsman, likewise, could only think of the woman in the forest. He determined the next time he saw her again, if ever he did, he would speak to her. A slow month came and passed, and the princess waited eagerly that night for the door to open. The second it did, she went through and began to search for the strange man in the woods. They met, and talked, and walked by the babbling stream.”

The father glanced down at his daughter, for she had grown quiet. Rubbing her eyes, she asked quietly, “What happened?”

The man hugged his daughter tightly, throat constricting. He fought a moment to overcome the feeling of compassion he had for his little girl, then said, “In the morning, she bid him farewell, and went back through the door once more. More slow months passed. With each new visit, the princess decided she loved the strange man, and the man decided he loved her back. They would hold hands and walk along the riverside. Sometimes the princess would sing him a quiet song, her voice as sweet as a nightingale. Sometimes he would tell her of all the animals in the forest like the funny little chipmunks that shoved as many nuts into their mouths as they could. Each time the sun rose, the princess would shed a tear to leave her strange earth man, but he would urge her home to her family so that she would not die. He promised her he would never cry, for she shed enough tears for both of them. One night, they had a wedding ceremony by their river, and the night sky above them sparkled with stars. The months grew long, and the princess gave birth to a beautiful little girl.”

“As the years wore on, the queen began to notice her daughter had changed. The queen asked questions, and eventually the princess told her mother of the magic door, the trips to earth, and the woodsman that waited with their child. The queen grew afraid and angry and demanded to see the magic door. As soon as she laid eyes on it, she tried to destroy it, but only the king could remove it since he was the one who put it there. Enraged, the queen did the next-best thing and cursed her daughter with the worst curse she could think of. The princess could not be touched by anyone on earth or she would melt into the earth and be tread upon by all the animals, nothing more than the dirt and dust of the ground.”

The firelight had now grown dim, but even in such pale light the father could see his daughter fighting to stay awake. He kissed the top of her forehead. Her smooth, young skin seemed so soft against his parched lips. “The princess was very sad; she knew she could never hold her woodsman’s hand again or rock her baby to sleep. The next night the door opened, she walked through slowly, and as soon as she saw her husband, she had to shout at him not to hold her, or she would die. Her child was a month old already, and they realized that very night that the girl would never have two normal parents. How could they explain to a child as young as theirs that when it grew, if it touched its mother, she would die? What if on accident either the woodsman or the child brushed against the princess in passing?

“She cried again that night, tears enough for both of them; she knew that she had to return to the sky for good. And for the last time, the woodsman and the princess sat by the river, untouchable. When the sun rose, the princess shed one final tear, the brightest and biggest of them all, and once she stepped through the magic door, she used her tear to seal her magic door shut forever.”

The man’s daughter was limp in his strong arms, and he rocked her tenderly back and forth, as if he held the greatest treasure in the world. His eyes were upturned to the sky once more, tracing lines between each star and connecting them all to form the face of a woman he knew once, long ago. “That tear, the saddest tear that was ever cried, is the full moon. And once a month, every month, it creeps into the heaves, covering the door to the kingdom of the sky.”

There was stillness in the woods, and peaceful silence. The world had fallen asleep, lulled to rest by the melody of the story as it had been sung through the air, a tune that time had long ago forgotten. In the stillness, in gazing at the full moon above, the man almost imagined he heard a voice whispering to him on a tendril of wind. It told him to hold her tighter, to love her deeper, to kiss her soft cheeks, to rock her back to sleep, to tell her of all the joys of the world, to laugh with her and make her smile, and to cry stars with her when she felt alone. Love her as I cannot. Love her for me.

With shaky knees, the woodsman rose, careful not to disturb the tiny person huddled in his arms. He carried her gently to their house built in the middle of an ancient forest, the trees hushing the wind’s voices so the little princess could sleep sweetly. He softly slid her out from his arms and onto the warm covers on top of her bed, then proceeded to tuck her in. Perched at the corner of her bed, he watched her sleeping delicately in the moonlight, then peered out the window at the distant sky. The girl, confusing this all for a dream, opened one lazy eye, and for a split second thought she could see upon her father’s face the glittering tear trail of a star.