I: DAUGHTER OF THE MOON
24 August 1893
Arethusa. The water-bearer. This is to be my new name. Is the name a curse or a blessing? Perhaps neither. Perhaps my mother has merely destined me for a love of watery things. It is true. The sea is in my blood, slipping quicksilver through my veins. And the Moon Goddess is to be my mistress. No more Eva now. No more a daughter of God.
Strange how our names become our fate. No matter my fate, given a choice, still I would choose that name: Arethusa, nymph of the old world, daughter of the moon.
Eva’s fingers shook as she held the match to the candlewick. The chill night air seeped through her thin shift. Even in deep summer, Massachusetts still clung to the remnants of spring when the sun sank below the foothills. But it was not the wind that gave her shivers.
“Calm down,” Mãe said, laying her hand over Eva’s to still them. “Your Pai will be gone for hours yet and Artemis will rise soon enough.”
Eva held the match closer to the candlewick. The wind snatched out the flame with a huff. Again, her hand trembled when she drew out another match, and she hated that her mother saw it.
With the changing of her name, she would deny her father’s faith and embrace her mother’s. A simple choice. And a dangerous one. A pagan in a Catholic world had need of secrecy, and courage. But for her it was more than a question of faith. Her namesake was a nymph devoted to Artemis, Goddess of the Moon. A nymph who had a story, a life, a life that would now become hers.
From beginning to end, she knew what her fate would be. But it was not the Catholic fate of heaven or hell. No, it was a kind of immortality. A deathless death. And she feared this most of all. In fulfilling her destiny would she cease to exist? Would the essence of her soul be lost?
For many years she had known this day was coming, known it as she had known the exact shade of blue in her eyes, the precise shape of her fingertips. And despite her fleeting doubts, she knew she would not hesitate when it came time to give her promise. It was not in her nature to falter. And she dared not falter now.
Mãe laid the matches next to the other items on the makeshift altar, a boulder hidden in a copse behind the farmhouse, and took up Eva’s hands in hers. Her mother’s hands were warm despite the sharp coil of the night winds.
“What is it?” Mãe’s sharp eyes penetrated hers even in the murky hour before moonrise. “When you come before Artemis, you cannot doubt her.”
She knows me so well. Eva glanced down at their clasped hands, unable to look at her mother. “You’ll leave me here. And I’ll be left to wait alone.”
“Yes. I will be gone but not lost. You’ll find me in your visions, in the scrying bowl. I won’t be far.” Mãe gave her a tiny smile out of the corner of her mouth. “It was the same for me. The Goddess took my mother early on. Your grandmother told me the stories, raised me up in her beliefs. When she was taken, I had no one to guide me. I had only myself. But you have to stay strong. There are few in the world who follow Artemis, and none that I know of among the Azoreans.”
Eva considered this. “What will it feel like when I make my vow?”
“It will be a mind-change. You think that you understand, that you believe. But when you give your promise, your belief will be just the beginning. The world will look different. You will see with new eyes.”
“I’m not sure—”
Mãe stopped her with a squeeze of the hand. “Take your vow, Eva. Take your new name. Your fear will pass into understanding.”
This was some comfort. The doubt in her heart seemed to bend now, allowing her space to breathe and think and let go. She did breathe then, deep and full.
Eva struck a new match. The spark kindled a bit of hope in her heart as she lit the candle. Yes, she would take her name, her vow. She would accept and follow.
She felt Mãe’s hand on her shoulder.
“Look.”
Eva glanced up. Though she hadn’t broken the tree line yet, the Goddess had already fired the tops of the distant maples and pines with the spindly orange flames of her moonlight.
“Artemis is rising,” Eva whispered.
“It’s time,” Mãe said, bowing her head. “Close your eyes, and fix your thoughts on her light as it fills the circle, as it fills the moonstone, giving it power.”
With her eyes shut tight, Eva’s other senses were heightened. She smelled the warm smoke of the candle flame, touched the grit of the boulder’s rough surface. She imagined Artemis’s light descending on their small circle like a cataract. She watched in her mind’s eye as it poured into the moonstone, her mother’s amulet of protection. And behind her closed lids, she felt the Goddess touch her face with a pale glow. How could she have ever doubted? She need only to turn her face to this palpable light and let go of her fear. And she did so, knowing that within this circle she was safe, she was home.
A touch on her arm.
“Do you hear that?” Mãe whispered.
A rustling in the corn stalks came from the direction of the farmhouse. Eva’s breath came quick.
Pai.
No, her father would be in New Bedford for hours yet, burying another day at the shipyard in a pint of beer.
“It’s nothing. Just a vole or a red fox,” Eva reassured her.
“No, querida,” Mãe said, glancing toward the corn stalks. “It’s him.”
“Mãe, he wouldn’t be—” Eva began, and then she heard them. Footsteps. Through the garden. The dull thump-thump of heavy boots resounded in the soil.
The candlelight was dim, but it couldn’t mask the fear passing over her mother’s tense face. Eva prayed for the Goddess to surround her mother with protection. She knew Pai had long held his suspicions, but when he saw the candle-lit circle and the ritual objects of incense, rose, water, moonstone, and salt, when he saw them kneeling before the moon in the deep of night—he would know beyond doubt that the rumors were true.
“Stay quiet, querida,” Mãe whispered. “Promise me. No matter what happens, you’ll not interfere.”
Eva shook her head, tried to speak, tried to tell her mother that she would somehow protect her, but her tongue felt like lead. She froze, knowing she had nowhere to hide, no way to run. The familiar fear made her mouth go dry and her breath come in hollow bursts, as if her ribcage would fall right through her chest. She gripped her mother’s hand, her panic rising to a fever pitch.
Her father burst through the last of the garden’s corn stalks. Eva jumped to her feet instinctively. She smelled the workday sweat on his body as he advanced. The rising shadow at his back threw his thick muscles into relief against the corn stalks. The moonlight encased him in silver, but the candlelight exposed the horror in his eyes and the saddle latigo swinging at his side. When his wild gaze swept the circle, a flash of fear crossed his face, but his anger would master him soon, Eva knew. It always did.
“A witch.” His voice cracked as the word filled his mouth. “A witch!”
For a long moment, her mother kept her father’s eyes locked in a withering glare.
“All this time. A pagan. Is that why your father gave you to me? So he wouldn’t have to live with the shame?” He shook his head, balled his fists, closed his eyes, and breathed in heavy gasps. When he opened his eyes again, the horror had passed into accusation. “Why? Is it just to spite me? I would have loved you, Maria. I would have—” He broke off into a groan of frustration, pacing like a caged animal.
It was then that he noticed Eva. “You poisoned my daughter with this”—he stepped back, jabbed a finger in the air at the circle—“this witchcraft. The priests will excommunicate her. The people will shun her. You would sentence your own flesh and blood to hell?”
Mãe said nothing, only stared at him, unblinking. But Eva listened to his words. The words hell and excommunicate hung thick in the smoky air of Artemis’s circle, reminding her again of her buried doubts.
“Get up, witch,” Pai said to her mother, his voice low like the growl of a dog. When she did not, he touched the latigo at his belt loop. Eva’s breath caught as she eyed the wide leather strap. He cracked it against his leg. “I’ll not say it again.”
Still, Mãe did not move.
He narrowed his eyes and stamped around the circle, taking care not to step inside the light. “I’ll not harbor a witch in my house. And you won’t be making one of my child. You’ll sail with me to Terceira, Maria. Do you hear me? You’ll sail, but you won’t be coming back. Eva will stay with me here. She will be a Catholic, Maria. Do you hear?”
When his voice rose with the last words, her mother’s eyes flared with fury. Yet when she spoke, every word was slow and deliberate.
“I curse you, Eduardo Maré. I curse you if these are the last words I ever utter.”
Shock made him stagger back, and he crossed himself.
“Take my daughter from me, and you’ll not live out the year. I swear it by the Goddess. I swear it on my own life.”
At this, her father’s rage twisted to madness. He fumbled for the latigo at his waist and lunged across the circle for Mãe. He pushed her up against the altar, knocking over the bowls of salt and water, sticking the rose’s thorns deep into her elbow.
Her mother cried out, as much in surprise as anger.
Eva saw the pain, the humiliation crossing her mother’s face. And she remembered her mother’s words. You will not interfere.
She wanted to say, And if he kills you, Mãe, what then? No, she would not—could not—stand by and watch. Eva stretched out a hand to grasp the latigo as he reached back to strike. The strap pulled tight, jerking Eva off her feet.
Pai leaned back, caught off-guard. He did not seem to see her at first. It was as if he and her mother always had an unspoken rule that she should not come between them. And she never had. Until now.
When his eyes cleared, she saw the workings of his mind playing out on his face. He saw her now as he saw her mother: pagan, other, to be feared, to be punished.
Without a word, he made a fist and hit her across the cheek. She saw a flash of light in a whirl of darkness, and when next she could see and feel she was staring up at him from the dirt, ears ringing, his image blurring into two. The fire of pain swept over the left side of her face, and the realization of her father’s violence overtook her in an uncontrollable shiver.
“You are no daughter of mine.”
She had never known true hatred for him until this moment. The revulsion that wracked her was mirrored in his eyes. He gripped the leather strap until his fingers shook. “Witch,” he said, and he spat out the word like a curse.
Then Pai turned back to her mother and showed her the meaning of obedience.
* * *
The hollow tang-tang of the ship’s bell marked the hour of nine. But nothing could drown out the deafening click of the tumblers as Pai turned the key in the stateroom’s lock. At the sound, Eva saw her mother flinch.
She crossed the cramped length of the stateroom to where Mãe stood by the tiny berth.
“He destroys everything,” her mother said, her blue eyes hollow with detached rage.
Eva touched her mother’s sleeve and felt a tremor. The arms that had fought him were tender still.
Mãe pulled away. “It’s over now. This was your last chance. Without the stone, we cannot finish the moon rite.” Out of old habit, Mãe reached for the moonstone that she had always kept on a chain around her neck. But Pai had it now.
Eva would steal it back from him. The moonstone was valuable. He would not take it out on deck. He would lock it up in his room. And if she could just get out of here . . .
“Maybe I can take it back from him,” Eva said.
But her mother wasn’t listening. “I will leave him,” she said, her voice hoarse with conviction. “I don’t care. As soon as we get there. As soon as we drop anchor—”
“Yes,” Eva said. “We’re almost there.”
She turned away from her mother and stared hard out to sea, determined to focus on the porthole before her, the tiny window that gazed like a lantern eye on a world she could not touch.
The Azores Islands lay in wait. Before dawn the clipper Sea Nymph would drop anchor in the deep waters that lay aside Angra do Heroísmo, Terceira Island’s finest city. Eva wiped the moisture from the porthole’s thick glass. The Sea Nymph still sliced smooth chasms through the Atlantic waves, her wood creaking at soothing intervals in the stiff breeze. The storm that had chased them all day still threatened from the west, gaining on the old clipper ship with every nautical mile.
Why couldn’t she be up on deck, touching that swift wind with her own hands? She longed for the freedom of the deck, wanting to hear the clear bells of the watches, the sanding scratch of the holystones on the planks, the rhythm of the sea. She’d have more strength of will if she could face this night head-on, without a barrier of glass and wood between her and the Goddess, between her and the sea. In New Bedford, Eva knew only earth and cows and the cloistered world of sheltered ladies: home, church, market, and back again. Here she could taste the sea in her mouth and feel it cradle her from below.
Eva ran a hand over her face, anxiety itching through her like a pox. Everything was against them. Without the moonstone they could not complete the ceremony. And if the storm caught the ship, Artemis would be hidden behind clouds and rain. And if Pai came back to find them lighting the candles again . . .
“If the storm blocks out the moon, can we complete the ceremony?” she asked. Eva didn’t think Mãe had heard her. When she opened her mouth to repeat the question, her mother’s eyes darted up at last.
“No,” Mãe said, resignation softening her tone.
Eva caught the low hum of voices out in the Great Cabin. It was Diogo and his father, Marquez Gonçalo Cheia, owner of the Sea Nymph. It came to her mind then that she knew exactly how she might gain the stone back. Pai had the first watch tonight. He’d be out on deck for another three hours unless he had to come back down for his foul weather gear. Artemis would rise soon, without fail. Yes, all the elements were in place. All save the stone. And soon she would have that too.
As she calculated, Eva gazed at Mãe, though it was hard for her to look at her mother now. The yellowed bruises on her cheeks and jaw still lingered, and her eye was not yet healed. It was a month to the day that Pai had come home early, cutting short the moon rite and accusing them of witchcraft. She still remembered his bulk towering over her as she cowered in the dirt at his feet. She felt again his fist across the bone of her cheek. She brought her own fist up to touch it now. She had waited fifteen years for this day, this name, this legacy. No more waiting. No more fear.
Not this time, Pai. This time you can’t stop us.