Excerpt: Argent Moon

Part 3: Piper

The screams lasted the entire night.
I could hear it, a woman, screaming. It was the full moon, and I figured that it must be werewolves getting her.
She screamed a name, several times. It sounded like Seth. I wonder who he is?
I couldn’t sleep, her screams kept me awake. Why can’t you be quiet? I need sleep, you know.
And when I finally got sleep, I kept on having nightmares. I stayed up after that. I didn’t want to see those nightmares. They scared me. They weren’t about me, for some reason. They were about a grown up, I think, someone with dark brown hair. The wolves were all around her.
I wish I had a light.
The sun rose, and the screams finally faded. Another day. The shadows were gone, the scary figures that I couldn’t see. I stretched, and looked around, food the first thing in my mind.

There was a man, I met. He didn’t tell me his name. He was tall, taller than me, with brown hair and big, cheerful brown eyes. He gave me food.
He tried to talk to me every once in a while. “What’s you name?” he said.
I shrugged. “Don’t know,” I said, eating some of the bread he had given me.
He wasn’t happy. “But everyone has to have a name,” he said to me. I shrugged, not slaying anything. He watched me a while after that, and walked away.
He came again, another time. He was carrying something, something that looked like a thin stick. He knelt down in front of me, and handed the stick to me.
“Here,” he said. “This is a flute. I found it for you.”
I tried to bite the stick, and he laughed. “No, silly,” he said, taking it away from me gently. “You don’t eat it. You make music with it.”
I didn’t know what that was. “What’s music?” I asked. He smiled, and held the stick next to his mouth. A beautiful sound appeared, out of thin air, a whistling sound. His fingers moved along the stick, and the sound changed. My mouth dropped open.
“Wow,” I said as he gave it to me.
“Now you have something to do when you’re bored,” he said with a smile. I held it to my lips like he had and waited. Nothing happened. I noticed holes all along the stick, and moved my fingers over them. Still nothing.
He laughed, a rich, deep alugh. I like his laugh. It made me happy. “You need to blow,” he said, pointing to a larger hole near my mouth. He showed me how to blow across it to make a sound.
I held it up to my mouth and blew gently. A clear, ringing note came out, and I kept on blowing eagerly. I covered some of the holes with my fingers, and the sound changed.
I played with it for a while, and the man watched me, smiling. “My little piper,” I heard him whisper. I kept playing, but stopped soon and asked for the food he always brought for me.

He called me Piper after that. I guess that must be my name. I still don’t get what’s so special about names. Why do we need them?
Occasionally, he brought me other things, like clothes. One day, he brought me a small, pink dress.
“Try this on, Piper,” he said, handing it to me. “I want to see if it fits.” I walked into a nearby building and put the dress on, leaving my old shirt and shorts on the floor. I walked back out, and he smiled.
“You look beautiful,” he said quietly. He walked around me, and I smiled. HE was happy. “Piper?” he suddenly said, sounding worried. I looked at him curiously. “What’s this?” I felt his hand on my back, and I shivered.
“What?” I asked.
“There are blue marks on your back… tattoos, it looks like.”
“What’s a tattoo?”
“It’s like a picture, on a person’s body. You can have people make them for you.”
“What’s it a picture of?”
“It looks like… wings… “ he trailed off, and I turned around, looking at him. He was thinking about something, frowning like he always did when he was thinking. “They’re small wings, really.”
I shrugged. “I don’t remember having them,” I said cheerily. A wind came up, and I shuddered. The dress didn’t have any sleeves, and I was cold.
“Here,” he said, taking his coat off and putting it on me. I wrapped it around myself, cold. I looked at his eyes, deep, thinking eyes. He gave me another smile. “Better?” he asked.
I wrapped my arms around his chest in a hug. “Yeah. Thanks, Daddy!” I said happily. I didn’t really know what a Daddy was. I remember the word, though. It’s something good, I think.
He looked down at me, ruffling my short hair. I looked up at him, and there was water on his face. Tears. The word came to me, like Daddy.
Tears aren’t a good thing, I don’t think. But the man… he looked happy. I didn’t say anything.