The Woman Who Married the Man in the Moon

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Findros had just begun to sniffle, and Mourra was still impatiently denying her own rising fear, when the tall man with the ragged cloak and the funny, pointy hat fell out of a tree in front of them. The children both yelped and recoiled, but only for a moment: there is simply nothing alarming or impressive about a man, whatever his size, wearing a hat that looks like a cross between a dunce cap and a crown. Raised not to stare rudely at strangers, Findros and Mourra nonetheless gaped shamelessly as the man stumbled to his knees, then quickly found his feet. He was certainly the tallest person either of them had ever seen, yet not big, not in a menacing way, like a giant or an ogre. Politely, he was slender, lean; less politely, gangleshanked; rudely, skinny, meager, gaunted-down. His thinness made his hands and feet look bigger than they really were, like those of a puppy yet expected to grow into his floppy paws, while his generous, flaring nose definitely belonged on an older, fiercer face. And if the green eyes were at once deep and distant, his voice was light and warm, a voice that tried not to call attention to itself. The man asked, “Children, are you in trouble? Are you lost?”

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