A Nearer Moon Read Online Free

cheek to banish the memory that tunneled holes in her heart. Willow was going to be fine. She was.
    â€œHey!”
    Luna’s head jerked toward the riverbank, where a figure darted around the trees, waving his hands over his head and shouting.
    â€œYour mama’s gonna skin you alive!”
    Luna scowled and kept poling forward, concentrating on keeping the boat pointed upriver. She shouted back over her shoulder, “If you only came out here to scold me, you should have stayed in bed!”
    â€œAw, come on. You know you want me along!” Benny called.
    Luna ignored him, and the sound of pitter-patter footsteps along the riverbank stopped.
    â€œI want to help Willow too, you know!”
    Luna’s pole snagged against a rock and the bow dipped under a curl of water that seemed to leap up out of nowhere. She lurched in the opposite direction to steady her boat as the bow speared, without so much as a nudge from her, toward the shore.
    The boat slid up onto the riverbank and sliced through the reeds. Benny scrambled in, rearranging Luna’s bundle behind him and shoving off, tipping until he was perched careful as a stork at the bow. He looked back and patted a lump at his side. “I brought honey cakes,” he announced by way of a truce.
    Luna’s traitorous stomach gurgled loud enough to wake wild pigs from their slumber. Benny’s shoulders shook in silent laughter, but he knew better than to let it out and give Luna even one reason to turn the boat around and dump him on the shore again.
    She squinted and pushed back into the current, coaxing her boat onto the flat tongue that wove down the center of the river. The river bottom was muddy in some places and rocky in others, and if she wasn’t careful, her pole would slide on a slippery stone and dump her in the water when she pushed too hard.
    The sun rose while she poled in silence. With the sun came the bugs, and the fish woke with them, jumping out of the water and splashing back down all around the boat. A black-winged darter leaped out of the shadows and pumped its wings, bobbing down the pulsing vein of the river, leading the way before them.
    Every time the sight of something new startled a gasp from her lips, regret rushed in. It felt like a betrayal, finding joy even in little things when Willow was in danger.
    Luna’s stomach broke the silence at last. Benny turned toward her and sat facing the stern while he handed her honey cakes one at a time. The smile on his face said, pure and simple, those honey cakes came with a price. And his price was answers.
    â€œSo you’re going to find a doctor?”
    Luna grimaced. “And how do you know that?”
    â€œNot telling. I hitched a snare to your front door so I’d know when you left.” Benny leaned back and flashed a self-satisfied smile. “Really, I should be the one mad at you for even thinking of going without me!”
    Luna snorted. It was a supremely stupid thing she was doing. And if the brief history of her life was any indication, if she was set on doing a supremely stupid thing, it was best to have Benny along.

6
Perdita
    T he little family floated in a banana leaf boat they had made for the day. Perdy stood at the helm, grasping the stem in one hand and swatting droplets of water out of the air with the other. Gia lay on her back and stared at the clouds in the sky as they shifted and shaped into globs that almost looked like a bird’s beak, or a blooming flower, or a skink sunning itself on a rock. Their mother lifted a hollow reed to her lips and blew, a stream of bubbles bursting below the surface and sending the leaf swaying across the water.
    Gia giggled at the sound every time, and Perdy brightened every time Gia laughed.
    â€œWhy do we have to go?” Perdy asked her mother, abandoning her post at the bow of the boat to lay her head on the pillow of Gia’s arm. “The humans leave us alone. The river is lovely. The fish