THE JUNE MOON

Now every day Eric was becoming acquainted with strange Forest People: those who had hidden away from winter in trees, and those who were wandering up from the south along with the birds, and Blue Water People, of course, all along the Forest streams. The Forest teemed with new playmates for him and Ivra.

Hide-and-go-seek was still the favorite game. And now it was more fun to be “It” than to be hiding almost, for one was likely to come upon strangers peeping out of tree hollows, swimming under water, or swinging in the tree tops, any minute. When the person who was “It” came across one of these strangers he would simply say, “I spy, and you’re It.” Then he would draw the stranger away to the goal, where he usually joined the game and was as much at home as though he had been playing in it from the very first.

The day that Eric found Wild Thyme so was the best of all, or rather she was the best of all. And that was strange, for when he first spied her he did not like her at all. Her dress was a purple slip just to her knees, with a big rent in the skirt. Her hair was short and bushy and dark. And her face was soberer than most Forest People’s faces. She was sitting out at the edge of the Forest on a flat rock, her chin in her hands, and she did not look eager to make friends with any one.

But he cried, “I spy! You’re It!” just the same. She did not lift her eyes. She only said, “You must catch me first. I am Wild Thyme, and that will be hard!”

Eric laughed, for she was not a yard away from him. And he sprang forward as he laughed. But she was quicker than he. She had been at perfect rest on the rock, her chin in her hands, and not looking at him, but the instant he jumped she was off like a flash, a purple streak across the field.

But Eric did not let his surprise delay him. He ran after her just as fast as he could, and that was very, very fast, for running with Ivra had taught him to run faster than most Earth Children ever dream of running. Soon, Wild Thyme slowed down a little, and faced him, running backward, her bushy hair raised from her head in the wind of her running, her little brown face and great purple eyes gleaming mischievously. Eric sprang for her. She dodged. He sprang again. She dodged again. He cried out in vexation and sprang again, straight and sure. He caught her by her bushy hair as she turned to fly.

And a strange thing happened to him in that second, the second he caught her hair. Instead of Wild Thyme and the sunny field, he was looking at the sea. He was standing on the shore, looking away and away, almost to foreign lands. Now ever since that spring night on the shore he had been thinking of the sea and longing with all his might to cross it and see foreign lands for himself. Only that had seemed impossible, and something he must surely wait till he was grown up to do. But now, in a flash, as his fingers closed on Wild Thyme’s hair, he knew that he could indeed do that, and anything else he really set his heart on.

No girl, even a fairy, likes to have her hair pulled. So Wild Thyme was angry. She pinched Eric’s arm with all her strength. Then he was angry. And so they stood holding each other, he her by the hair, and she him by the arm, staring hotly into each other’s faces. But slowly they relaxed, and becoming their own natural selves again, broke into laughter.

“You’ll play with us, won’t you?” Eric asked.

“Of course,” she said, “and I am It!” And away they ran to find the others, Ivra, the Tree Girl, the Forest Children, and Dan and Nan. When those saw who it was Eric had captured they ran to meet her, shouting gayly, “Wild Thyme! Goody! Goody! Hello, Wild Thyme!” They seemed to have known her always. She and Ivra threw their arms about each other’s shoulders and danced away to the goal.

Wild Thyme was a wonderful playfellow. She was so wild, so free, so strong, so mischievous. And when the game was ended she invited them to a dance that very night. “It’s to be around the Tree Man’s Tree,” she said. “And all come come when the moon rises.”

. . . Perhaps Eric’s good times in the Forest reached their very height that June night of the dance. He had never been to a dance before, and just at first he did not think there would be much fun in it. But Ivra wanted him to go, and offered to show him about the dances. So they ran away from the others to the edge of the field where Eric had discovered Wild Thyme, and there on the even, grassy ground Ivra showed him how to dance. It was very easy, not at all like the dances Earth Children dance. It was much more fun, and much livelier. The dances were just whirling and skipping and jumping, each dancer by himself, but all in a circle. Eric liked it as well as though it had been a new game.

Late that afternoon Helma and Ivra and Eric gathered ferns and flowers to deck themselves for the evening. They put them on over the stream, which was the only mirror in the Forest.

Helma made a girdle of brakes for herself, and a dandelion wreath for her hair. She wove a dear little cap of star flowers for Ivra, and a chain of them for her neck. Eric crowned himself with bloodroot and contrived grass sandals for his feet. But the sandals, of course, wore through before the end of the first dance and fell off.

They had a splendid supper of raspberries and cream, which they sat on the door stone to eat, and then told stories to each other, while they waited for the moon to rise. It came early, big and round and yellow, shining through the trees, flooding the aisles of the Forest with silver light until they looked like still streams, and the trees like masts of great ships standing in them.

Then the three hurried away to the Tree Man’s. They ran hand in hand through the forest aisles, their faces as bright to each other as in daylight. But before they even came in sight of the tree they heard music.

“Thrum, thrum, thrum, thrummmm, thrummmmmmmmmmmm.” Very soft, very insistent, very simple and strangely thrilling. When they came to the tree, there were the Forest Children, who had come early, whirling around in a circle, and the Tree Girl in the center of the circle making music with a tiny instrument she held in one hand and touched with the fingers of the other.

Soon Forest People began arriving from every direction. There were the Blue Water Children, bright pebbles around their necks, and white sea shells in their blue hair. The Forest Children were crowned with maidenhair fern. The Tree Girl was the most beautiful of all in her silver cobweb frock and her cloudy hair. The Tree Man stood still in the shadow, but his long white beard gleamed out, and his deep eyes. Wild Thyme wore a rope of the flower that is named for her around her neck, but there was a new rent in her purple frock and her legs were scratched as though she had remembered her dance only the last minute and come plunging the shortest way through bushes, which was true.

Thrum, thrum, thrum, thrummmmmmmmmm.

Every one except the Tree Man was dancing, bewitched in the moonlight, all over the grassy space around the great tree. The grass was cool and refreshing under Eric’s bare feet, and he often dug his bare toes into the soft earth at its roots as he leapt or ran just to make sure he was on earth at all. For he felt as though he were swimming in moonlight, or at least treading it.

Thrum, thrum, thrum, thrummmmmmmmmm.

When the Tree Girl’s music stopped between dances, then it would go on in Eric’s head. It was just the sound of the night after all. Once Eric noticed that the Beautiful Wicked Witch was dancing next to him in the circle but he was not afraid of her there with the others, and in bright moonlight. And she was plotting no ill. Her face was sparkling with delight and she had utterly forgotten herself in the dance.

When the great moon hung just above them, and shadows were few and far between, the Tree Mother came walking through the Forest, quieter and more beautiful than the moon. Wild Thyme ran to her and laid her bushy head against her breast. For Wild Thyme only of all the Forest People loved her without awe. The Tree Mother put her hand on Wild Thyme’s head and stood to watch the dancing. Her robe gleamed like frost, and her hair was a pool of light above her head.

Thrum, thrum, thrum, thrummmmmmmmm.

Wild Thyme jumped back into the dance and the Tree Mother stood alone. But although she stood as still as a moonbeam under the tree, she made Eric think of dancing more than all the others put together. It was her eyes. The thrum, thrum, thrum, thrummmmmmmmmm was in them, and the rest of that night Eric felt as though the music-instrument the Tree Girl was swinging was silent, and that all the music flowed from Tree Mother.

But Eric, after all, was only an Earth Child, and his legs got very tired in spite of the music and the moonlight. So at last he slipped out of the circle, and stumbling with weariness and sleepiness went to Tree Mother. She picked him up in her arms, and the minute his head touched her shoulder he was sound asleep, the music at last hushed in his head.

When he woke it was summer dawn. The birds were flitting above in the tree-boughs and making high singing. He was alone, lying beneath a silver birch, his head among the star flowers.

He knew that Helma and Ivra had not wanted to wake him, but had gone home when the moon set, and were waiting breakfast for him there now. So he jumped up and ran home through the dew.