It’s the time of the full moon once again, and Thursday brings the wolf moon in Leo, which is challenging us to let go of fears and insecurities, and to step out of limiting beliefs. A good time to howl, like a wolf, at the moon. Well then, it must be time for another Full Moon Tale.
These are original stories, in the style of fairy tales or folk tales, which I offer up for you to enjoy under the illuminating light of the moon. I hope you enjoy.
Drowned Stories
Once, a young woman went for a walk across the marshes. She strode out confidently along the paths she had followed a hundred times, where many men were afraid to step in case the solid ground was merely an illusion and they would find themselves sinking into the water. The young woman knew every inch of the marsh land, and she had no fear that it would try to drag her down into its murky depths.
On this day, though, as she paused to catch her breath and bask in the early spring sun, she noticed something strange in the water that she had not seen before. Some kind of plant spread out just below the surface, tangling with the stems of the bulrushes and bladderwort. It looked like some kind of pondweed, but it was white. A bright, brilliant white, like the light of the moon. And it was thick. As the woman stepped closer, peering into the dark water, she realised it was hair.
She jumped back, alarmed, and almost lost her footing; the heel of her shoe slipped into sodden grass behind her, but she managed to steady herself and lean back onto the path. She crept back towards the pool of water, and peered in to get another look. As she did so, she heard a voice, so soft that it could be mistaken for rustling in the reeds. So quiet, she could have heard it a thousand times before and mistaken it for the whispering of the wind. She stepped closer still, and now she could make out, beneath the dirty glass of the water’s surface, a woman’s face. Her heart lurched up from her chest into her throat, but she stayed where she was. The woman in the water was old, her face lined, the skin tight around the bones, and her eyes were closed as if she were dead. But, the young woman saw, her mouth was moving. At almost the exact moment the young woman realised this, the old woman’s eyes sprang open.
The young woman gasped, but held her ground. She looked into the old woman’s eyes. Those thin, creased lips had stopped moving.
“Good mother,” the young woman greeted her, her voice shivering as she spoke, “do you need help?” There was silence for what seemed like a long time. The young woman was about to repeat her question, when the old woman let out a long sigh.
“There is no help for me, child,” she answered, in a voice that was still barely more than the distant rumble of a storm out at sea. “I have been altogether lost.”
“There is always a way to come back, to come home,” the young woman insisted. “Can I not help you to return to your rightful place?”
“What place?” The old woman seemed almost to sneer. “There is no place for me. No one remembers me, no one heeds my words, they have forgotten all the old stories. I am not wanted in this world.”
“That’s not true.” The young woman tried to sound confident, but she felt her voice wavering. Then she had an idea. She sat down on the grass beside the water. “I would like to hear a story,” she told the old woman.
“No you wouldn’t, no one does.” The old woman sighed again.
“Please. I would be honoured if you would tell me a story. I have nowhere else I need to be.”
The old woman hesitated, but then she sighed a third time. “Very well,” she replied. And she began to tell the young woman a story.
When the tale finished, the sinking sun was beginning to pull the light out of the sky. The young woman told the woman in the water that she had to leave, but she promised to return the next day.
That night, she told the story that the old woman had told her to her family.
Every day, the young woman returned to the marsh, where she sat down beside the old woman’s pool and asked for a story. She brought her gifts of food, drink, flowers. After each story, she asked the old woman to come with her back to the town, but each time the old woman said that she could not. Every evening, the young woman returned to the town and told the story she had heard to whatever people she found.
After a few weeks, the young woman was passing the town square when she heard one of the old woman’s tales being shared by a boy to his friends. That afternoon, when she went to see the old woman, she told her excitedly of what she had overheard. “Won’t you come to the town with me and tell your stories yourself?” she asked her. But the old woman replied that she could not. The young woman went home alone.
Three days later, she overheard a woman telling one of the tales to a friend as they worked on the land. Again, she told the old woman.
“The world does want to hear your stories,” she said. The old woman looked up at her with her pale, dewy eyes, but she said nothing. “Won’t you come back to the town with me?” the young woman pleaded. But the old woman replied that she could not.
Another week passed, and the young woman heard the old woman’s stories everywhere. Each day when she saw the old woman, she told her of the different places she had heard them repeated. They were being told in the streets, in houses, in the tavern, at the market, they were being acted out by children in the square… the sound of the old tales buzzed in the air like bees.
After the young woman had returned home, the sound drifted on the wind, out across the marsh lands. The buzz of the stories reached the old woman in the pool. She heard the world telling the old tales again. She sat up, and lifted her head from the water.
The next day, when the young woman returned, she couldn’t see the old woman in her usual place. She felt a tightness in her chest as she looked around for her. Then she saw her, sitting on a boulder just a little way beyond her pool.
“You are free!” the young woman exclaimed, delighted. The old woman turned to her and smiled.
“The old stories are alive again,” she replied. “I am ready to go with you now.”