Animated I: Breaking the Moon

I: Breaking the Moon.
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It looks nothing like a baby doll.

Thus was Holly Yarrow's first thought after seeing the purple-faced blob that her parents insisted was her new baby sister. Then the oddly-colored thing opened its mouth and wailed.

Its squalling music sounded nothing like the cooing babies always made in storybooks, especially the ones that turned out to be special. The ones that grew up to be magical. Some grew wings or learned spells to make them fly. Others turned out to be long-lost princesses or good fairies that made everything turn out all right by the last page of the book. They were happy all the time, and when they giggled, it sounded like wind chimes.

She could hear her parents trying to calm the baby. Holly peeked around the corner of the hall, a scout carrying out a dangerous mission. Her mother finally noticed her approach, and waggled her fingers in a "come here" gesture, so she crept closer. The bundle continued to throw a magnificent tantrum, fretting without words and twisting its head around on a rotund, neckless body. It lay on its back in a pale green crib, sliding its feet around under the soft yellow blanket.

Cautiously, Holly extended a finger and gave the wrinkled brow a gentle nudge. The skin was as smooth and hairless as that of a mannequin. The baby's head gave an owl-like swivel, her mouth pausing mid-yowl. Her mother, stunned, grasped her father's wrist. Both parents were transfixed by the scene before them. They hardly dared breathe, trying not to disturb this first meeting between siblings.

"What's her name?" All of Holly's friends, family, and toys had names, even the plastic cars and every stuffed koala bear in her extensive collection. So, she reasoned, this new person must have a name as well.

"Maeve." Her mother's voice gusted out the word. "But you can call her Mae. Just like Great-Grandma." Their young infant was keeping strangely silent, staring up at her sister with glassy eyes.

"Ma-" She frowned, concentrated, and tried again. "Mae." She grinned. "May I?"

She broke away from that intent gaze, spinning in off-center loops around the room. Her voice rose in a giggling chant. "May I, may I, may I please? Ma-ma, da-da, may I eat peas? Kick trees? Eat cheese?"

Drew scooped her up and whirled her around, the two dancing to the tune of several more nonsensical questions. Callie leaned over her new treasure, whispering "Those two are a few weaves short of a basket. You and me, baby, we're the only sane ones here."

Mae let out a piercing yelp and stretched her arms out towards the edges of the crib, her small hands pinching the air. Callie sighed, suppressing a grin. "May-be not."

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Their new baby would lie in her crib for hours on end, chattering up at the pale yellow ceiling. She made friends with butterflies, screamed at the first sight of any stinging insect, and tugged at the curls in her dark hair whenever she got tired.

Holly thought of her as an interloper, a poor excuse for a child. Whereas the older girl could run, her baby sister could barely sit up. Mae didn't know the words to the songs on Turtle Time, or how to play hopscotch or even tag. Plus, her yelps sometimes made it difficult for Holly to get to sleep at night. Of course, this last liability could be turned into an excuse to stay up later and play a little longer. Still, Holly found herself dreaming of the day when she could take her little sister out and teach her to find cloud-animals or make a dandelion-seed explosion.

It took a while, but gradually Holly began to recognize Mae as a companion. She was closer in size than the grown-ups were, and could be used as a distraction whenever Holly had done something unscrupulous. Also, Mae never complained when her sibling borrowed her toys or didn't show her the pictures on every page of her storybook. She could even be induced to chase Holly in an impromptu - albeit slow - game of runaway train. Life was good. Well, mostly.

At first, Drew thought it might be the room - drafty, noisy, even haunted. Perhaps the children could hear the neighbor's dog or the birds outside the window by sitting still and listening. He had strained his own hearing, stared at the cheery walls of the nursery, had watched and waited just like his youngest daughter. There was nothing there. While Callie did admit that Mae was a little more introspective than most infants, and prone to fits of gazing at nothing, she laughed off his suggestions that their children were hearing voices or seeing phantoms. Though there were times when they would find her in the oddest positions and places. Once they had found her sitting cross-legged under her crib, hands in her lap like a little old woman. She would be found holding bits of paper no one could recall having dropped or folded in such odd ways. The parents were divided: Drew worried and Callie laughed at their "little adventurer".

Several times, the two had caught Mae having a staring contest with a celestial-themed mobile. A blue moon winked down at her, while a golden sun gave an impossibly wide grin. Both had tiny round mirrors for eyes that played hide-and-seek with the shafts of sunlight streaming in through the nursery windows. Callie was enthralled, but Drew was frightened by the stillness of Mae's tiny face. After a full minute, he broke the spell, swooping in and gathering his youngest child into his arms. He deliberately turned her furrowed face away from the colorful object, tickling her stomach with his lightly callused fingers.

Drew had expected to feel ridiculous every time he thought of the mobile with a shiver of fear, but there was something about the way it hung there. He had thought of replacing the it with other twirling bits of plastic, ones with cutesy giraffes or kindly-looking bears. But he knew Callie loved the old-fashioned thing, and would scoff at the thought that it had caused any of Mae's odd behavior. Sinister as bits of shrapnel, frozen mid-explosion, tolling out its alluring song: clink-chime-chime-clink, clink-jingle-chime-chime...Drew shook himself. Now he was staring at the blasted thing! Here we go, he thought, here comes the embarrassment...that proves this is just a load of rubbish. Mae might have a real problem and I'm blaming the decorations.

Ka-clink-chime-jing-he set his shoulders and walked out.

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Holly stretched under her sleepy bear blanket, woken by the storm of noise in another room. She frowned, concentrating on the voices slipping down the hall from the crack underneath her parents' door.

"...think we should take her to the doctor at least." Her father rumbled, lower in pitch and straining to keep his voice down.
"...ever heard of taking a ten-month-old to a psychiatrist?" That was her mother, tones not quite dulcet but quieter than her husband.
"...do you suggest, then? We sit here and pretend...normal...can't stand it when she just lays there and stares!"
"...some more time. She's just thoughtful and curious...doctor says her hearing's fine, vision good, we've all heard her yelling, so it can't be..."

Holly huffed a lock of black hair out of her eyes and scrunched up her face. She snuck not-too-clumsily down the hall to her baby sister's room and slipped inside. Abstract floral shapes bordered the ceiling and walls, and the room smelt of talc and that indefinable smell of babies - sweet when they are sweet, sour when they are sour.

As always, Mae was happy to see her, gurgling and drooling a smile at her sibling. Holly picked her up so carefully it was almost in slow motion and set her on the floor of her playpen with a few soft blocks. Bringing along a picture book, she climbed inside the pen to play. She could tell her parents what was wrong with her sister: she was a baby. Babies were all nuts. They preferred playing with their food to eating it, crawling to running, staring into space to reading a book. As the two girls began constructing a pastel-colored tower, Holly wondered what had prompted this latest row. A slight breeze ruffled Mae's dark hair in a wave and she giggled as Holly grasped her own hair and made it stand on end. As if in answer, a clink-chime-jingle came from over her crib, across the room. Mae turned unerringly toward the sound and widened her pale eyes; watching, waiting, almost as if she were listening to the most fascinating fairy tale ever told. Holly worked her five-year-old brain hard and thought...

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Callie was taking a much-deserved nap. She would never recall just what had pierced her dreams and made her stir fretfully. A slight sound, an unstealthy step? Some maternal instinct that spoke to her inner mischief-detector? She roused herself with the ease of all mothers of infants after many long nights spent half-awake.

She managed to get both feet in her slippers and one arm in a bathrobe before the crash came.

Her feet were moving before she had identified where the sound had come from. Perhaps her unconscious had been keeping tabs on the rooms, for her legs brought her to the nursery. A flash of blue and a broken-sounding "clonk" helped her single out the problem.

The beautiful mobile, the one Grandma had sent from Egypt, lay shattered on the floor. The little eyes that had once winked so charmingly out of the moon's face had been unceremoniously crushed. Only half of the sun's enigmatic smile remained intact, a thoroughly demystified Mona Lisa.

Mae sat in her playpen, waggling her arms at her mother, asking to be picked up. She showed no signs of upset or shock; indeed, she seemed more aware and alert than ever. Holly came running out of the washroom, her hands dripping wet and her face slightly red. She had nicked her pinkie on a stray bit of wire, but, she reflected, it had been worth it.

Holly felt that someone must take the blame for the so-called disaster, so she confessed to her father, somehow sensing he would be the more reasonable of the two parents. She was punished, of course - two days without dessert and no watching TV for the whole weekend, "and stay away from breakable, valuable things!" She had stopped listening halfway into the short lecture, choosing instead to reflect on her new role as the conquering heroine. She felt quite proud that she had defeated the Bad Ones, just like the clever princess had defeated the wicked ogres in her favorite book. Of course, she’d had to lie to her parents, but Holly had a scale-like conscience: she could tell that the weight of her half-truth had nothing on the good deed she’d done.

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Something had changed.

Callie paused on the stairs, waiting for the settling-in of the tension that hovered over her nerve-endings every time she entered the upper floor. Nothing. Delighted, she wandered absentmindedly down the upstairs hall, her footsteps muffled by the thick carpet. Her youngest child was engrossed in a game of pile-the-blocks, with a healthy dash of clap-and-sing. Drew joined Callie at the doorway as the two breathed a sigh of joy. With each breath, each step their newly upright daughter took, the memory of that miniature storm of wills faded from the Yarrows' collective memory. Gradually, they forgot there had been a handmade windchime, brought back from Grandmother's travels in the Middle East; that Holly had been unusually clumsy, that Mae had ever been strange or fretful.

But the horror of what Holly had seen...she shivered, even now, to think of it.

So Holly, too, hid it away in the recesses of her child's mind, never to be taken out and examined, even when she got Old and Wise like her parents said she would be one day. She imagined locking it in a trunk, throwing all manner of heavy things on top of it, and leaving it in the attic of a house she would never enter again.

She would not think of Mae climbing the ladder to the attic, one bootie-clad foot at a time, scratching her tiny hands at the trapdoor, falling asleep with bloodied nails and whimpering at her dreams.

How had she unlocked the gate, with its hidden latch?
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~~~~~~~~~AEW~~~~~~~~~