“When he came to me… oh, Sharlie… when he came…”
To my alarm, she began to weep.
“To HEAR again, Sharlie! Oh to HEAR again, even though not a human voice, was so WONDERFUL—”
Radar got up and padded across to her. Claudia put her head close to Radar’s for a few moments, at the same time stroking her sides from neck to tail. Taking comfort. Woody put an arm around her. I thought about doing the same but didn’t. Prince or not, I was too shy.
She raised her head and wiped the tears from her cheeks with the heels of her hands. When she resumed, it was at her usual volume.
“ELSA THE MERMAID SANG TO THE CHILDREN, DID STEPHEN TELL YOU THAT?”
“Yes,” I said, then remembered she was deaf and nodded.
“SHE WOULD SING TO ANY WHO STOPPED TO LISTEN, BUT ONLY IF THEY WOULD CLEAR THEIR MINDS OF OTHER THOUGHTS SO THEY COULD HEAR. ROBERT AND LEAH’S SISTERS HAD NO TIME FOR SUCH SILLINESS, BUT ELDEN AND LEAH WERE DIFFERENT. THEY WERE BEAUTIFUL SONGS, WEREN’T THEY, WOODY?”
“They were,” he said, although from the expression on his face I doubted if he’d had much time for Elsa’s songs, either.
I tapped my forehead, then leaned forward and tapped hers. I raised my hands in a questioning gesture.
“YES, SHARLIE. NOT SONGS THAT COULD BE HEARD WITH EARS, FOR MERMAIDS CAN’T SPEAK.”
“But the cricket?” I made jumping gestures with a hand. “The… what did you call it? A snab?”
I’ll spare you Claudia’s booming voice for a bit, shall I? The red cricket wasn’t a snab, but the Snab. Claudia called him the king of the small world. I assumed then that she meant insects （It’s just a damn inseck, Peterkin had said）， but later I came to believe that the Snab might be the ruler of many of the creatures I’d seen. And like Elsa the mermaid, the Snab could speak to humans, and it had spoken to Claudia after accompanying Radar to her house. According to Claudia, the Snab made most of the trip riding on Radar’s back. That was hard for me to picture, but I could understand why; the cricket was still recovering from an injured back leg, after all.
The Snab told her the dog’s master had been either killed or taken prisoner in Lilimar. It had asked Claudia if there was anything it could do, beyond shepherding the dog safely back to her. Because, it said, the young man had saved its life and that sort of debt had to be repaid. It told her that if the young man were still alive, he would have been imprisoned in Deep Maleen, and it knew a way in.
“The Snab,” Iota said in a wondering voice. “I saw the Snab and didn’t even know. I’ll be poked.”
“It didn’t speak to me,” I said.
Woody smiled at that. “Were you listening?”
Of course I hadn’t been; my mind had been filled with my own thoughts… just as the minds of many who passed Elsa didn’t hear her songs because they were too busy to listen. That much is true about songs （and many stories） even in my own world. They speak mind to mind, but only if you listen.
It occurred to me that I had not only been saved by a dream of my mother’s hairdryer, but also by a cricket king to whom I had done a good turn. Remember when I said at the outset that no one would believe my story?
4
Woody and Claudia were tired, I could see that, even Radar was now snoozing, but there was more I needed to know. “What did Leah mean about the moons kissing?”
Woody said, “Perhaps your friend can tell you.”
Iota was eager to do so. He had been told the story of the sky-sisters as a child, and as you probably know for yourself, dear reader, it’s the stories of our childhood that make the deepest impressions and last the longest.
“They chase each other, as everyone has seen. Or did, before the clouds came so thick and constant.” He glanced at Woody’s scars. “Those with eyes, anyway. Sometimes it’s Bella in the lead, sometimes Arabella. Most of the time one leads the other by a lot, but then the distance begins to close.”
I had seen that for myself on the occasions when the clouds rifted apart.
“Eventually one passes the other, and on that night they merge and appear to kiss.”
“In the old days it was told by men of wisdom that someday they’ll actually collide,” Woody said, “and both will be smashed to bits. They might not even need to collide for them to be destroyed; their mutual attraction might pull them to pieces. As sometimes happens in human lives.”
Iota had no interest in such philosophical postulates. He said, “Tis also told that on the night when the sky-sisters kiss, every evil thing is set free to work wickedness on the world.” He paused. “When I was a youngster we were forbidden to go out on nights when the sisters kissed. The wolves howled, the wind howled, but not just the wolves and the wind.” He looked at me somberly. “Charlie, the world howled. As if it was in pain.”