BABUSHKA: The Warrior's Angel

Chapter II. Moonlight Shadows

II. MOONLIGHT SHADOWS

It was a stuffy night in December when the girl, still braided and dressed in her Sunday best, pulled aside her sheet and the mosquito-netting to slip quietly out of bed.

           The mission had been over a year in the planning but she still felt nervous that she had forgotten some tiny detail as she climbed out of her bedroom window like a secret commando: her narrow shoulders spanned by her tightly-wound parasol for a rifle, held securely in its place by her backpack – the pack’s top-flap not quite hiding her new panda, its concerned black glass eyes sparked to life by the fireflies, their loop-the-looping driven even crazier as she clambered down the short rope that she had plaited from more friendship bracelets than she could count.

           According to her glittery wristband – which would have been sink-and-knifed had she had anyone to sink-and-knife with – it was exactly oh-two-hundred hours when her sneakers touched down on the veranda that skirted the back of the house. Imagining herself a cat (a grinning Cheshire perhaps?) she crept along the least creaky of the pitch-pin strips and past her grandfather’s triple-stitched hammock, her eyes quickly adjusting so she could even make out the little white blobs nestling high up in the eucalyptus, the tree’s shiny kitchen-foil leaves blinking in the moonlight.

            How many Sunday mornings, she wondered, had Grumps stormed out with one of his guns, cursing and blasting away at those squawking birds? If he had done it once he had done it a thousand times, but still they kept returning and still they kept teasing him with their racket and their pecking at the mangoes. Now though the parrots were so quiet they could have been stuffed, their crests tucked beneath their wings as if he had at last managed to carry out his threat to blow their bloody heads off. She almost allowed herself a half-smile at the thought of the grownup word, repeating it in her mind three times for luck: Bloody, Bloody, Bloody.

            No luck had been involved though in her choice of this particular night for the mission. Despite secretly training herself for months at sleeping with her bedroom door shut and her bedside lamp off and her drapes drawn, she had to admit that she was still scared of the dark and whatever it was that wrapped itself in it. But now, in the glow of the fat harvest moon, the night was different. Rather than being afraid she felt herself oddly calm – almost as calm as the river – hypnotized by the way everything seemed to be bathed in the strange silvery light: not so much as though the scenery looked painted, but more as though it had been unpainted, stripped of all its color and polished back to bare metal.

            From the neatly striped lawn, bordered by the junkers’ bungalows as far as the old mill, then all the way past the wishing-well and the hedged maze, to the chapel and the private plot by the giant mango: it was, to her, as if all that was left of the scene was its reflections and shadows – soft moonlight shadows – yawning from beneath every tree and every bush and every tiny tombstone… And then, even further: up the gentle slope to the jamoon grove and down across the water, its soft surface tucked into the banks as tight as fresh sheets after a washday; and sweeping out over the cane fields, a bazillion steely spears planted as far as there was land to plant; and, finally, right up to the northern hills, squashed smooth beneath the weight of the Big Dipper and a bazillion other stars – it was as though someone, or as if something, had cast a solstice spell, and from her vantage point up on the deck she was now poised at the edge of a magical pool where, should she dare to dive in, she would be sure to discover a slithy tove or mome rath to befriend.

           Nearly allowing herself another half-smile at the thought of the odd creatures foraging for cheese or oysters (or whatever it was they exactly lived on) she strained her eyes and scanned the enchanted land but even the crickets seemed to have declared a truce and she failed to make out a single stirring aside from the twinkling leaves, whispering their secrets to those dozy birds.

           Lightly shifting the course of her wandering mind, a warm land breeze weaved its way through the herb-garden and up to the veranda, the resulting bouquet as complex in design as any one of her homemade bracelets: tick-leaf, couve, goyave, cilantro, basil – they had been amongst the first words she had learned during her highchair years spent mostly in the kitchen, drooling in the smells coming from the bubbling pots and pans. For a moment she couldn’t quite place the one essential ingredient that was missing in the night air around her – a delicate flavoring that was rarely absent from her grandmother’s cooking – but then she remembered and it reminded her of the next stage of her mission, pulling her back from the edge of the lunar pool and its fairytale kingdom.

           With no more than a few tiptoed footsteps along the deck though she had to pause once more, this time to take a deep breath before getting down on her belly to wriggle past Gramps’ French windows. As Gran’s bedroom was opposite her own at the top of the stairs, sneaking out that way would have been even riskier – especially since she always left her door ajar and the hallway light on.

            Did it run in the family? she wondered as she wriggled. This fear of the dark…

           But then, instantly erasing the question from her mind, came the jingle of the silver bell that hung from her panda’s neck, freezing her for fear of waking the lightest and grumpiest sleeper ever known to mankind. Carefully, doing the only thing she could think of, she reached over her shoulder to pull on the ribbon’s bow, gently freeing the bell and popping it in her mouth before continuing with her wormy progress, her lip tightly buttoned.

           Finally clear of the windows, back up on her feet, she crept down the veranda’s rickety steps to the path that snaked around the house, tying the bell back around her panda’s neck as she followed the broken paving in the direction of the stables up to the side of the grounds. Stopping at a large shiny bush along the way, she picked three generous bunches of spice-leaves: not only were they Gran’s secret ingredient, they were also the preferred currency of the horses – Montezuma, Carmen and their new foal, Zapata – their moon-flecked eyes now gleaming like giant polished hammernuts as they peaked out from the darkness above their stable doors, already smacking their rubbery lips at the thought of her visit.

           Watching them munch away, lightly frothing at the delicacy of her offering, she reached up to caress their fuzzy noses, surely the softest things in the world, except perhaps for the collection of bears piled high at the foot of her bed; a collection she had acquired at a rate of one per week (‘Silverbell’ being just the latest addition) in exchange for promising her Sundays to Gramps. Now though it occurred to her that she was getting too old for teddies and pandas and the suchlike so, with the horses’ silence successfully purchased, the set of her chin became doubly determined as she headed off for her next objective along the winding path.