Being a Green Mother Read Free

is a whole! I’m a whole sister!”
    But he shook his head. “Half sister to her father the Magician, and half sister to her mother Blenda. Because you share one parent with each. Two halves. But either qualifies you as Luna’s aunt.”
    Orb shook her head. “That’s too mixed up for me, Daddy.”
    They were approaching the house. “I could draw you a chart, but I don’t think you could read the names.”
    “I’ll learn, Daddy!” she exclaimed.
    So when they got inside, and Orb had been washed and cleaned by her mother, who did not ask questions after receiving a warning look from her father, Pace made a chart for her.

    Then he went over it with the two girls, because by this time Luna was up and curious, too. “My cousin Cedric Kaftan married Niobe, back way long, long ago,” he explained. “Their son became the Magician. Meanwhile, I married Blanche, and our daughter was Blenda. The Magician marriedBlenda, who was his second cousin, and they had you, Luna.” He tweaked a strand of her clover-honey hair, and she smiled. The two girls had been born only days apart and had trouble remembering who had been first.
    “Cedric died young,” Pacian continued, “and later Blanche died. That was when Niobe and I got together, and had you, Orb. So you are the Magician’s half sister through Niobe, and Blenda’s half sister through me. The two of you are of different generations, even though you are the same age and look like twins.”
    “Why are you so much older than Niobe?” Luna asked.
    Pace smiled. “I’m actually eleven years younger than Niobe,” he said. “She was the most beautiful woman of her generation, and she kept her youth.”
    The two girls looked at each other, the clover-honey blonde and the buckwheat-honey blonde, and shook their heads. They suspected they were being teased. It was obvious that Pace was much older than Niobe!
    “Which relates to the prophecy concerning the two of you,” Pace continued.
    “What?” Orb asked.
    “A prediction, a divination, a telling of the future,” he explained. “What will happen. I think it is time for you to know it.”
    “Yes!” they agreed together, for this had the smell of mystery.
    “It was a complex prophecy and it caused the Magician to lay a geis on you both, that no further prophecy can be made for you. It started with your fathers, when we were young, before we ever married. It was that each of us would marry the most beautiful woman of her generation and have a daughter.”
    “And you did!” Luna exclaimed. “Our mothers are—”
    “Yes. That is part of it. But the rest of it is this: that one daughter might marry Death, and the other might marry Evil.”
    “But we’re too young to marry anyone!” Orb protested.
    “So you are—at the moment. But when you both grow up and are as beautiful as your mothers, remember that prophecy and be careful. No one knows exactly what it means.”
    “We will!” they chorused, not taking it seriously, for they never really expected to be other than they were right now. In later years, however, they were to remember, and Orb would wonder: did this relate to her vision? A wedding—and a dead world?

– 2 –
HAMADRYAD
    Two years later both Orb and Luna could see the sprites and other magical creatures, and Orb could hear the music of natural things, while Luna could see their auras. It was a secret from their mothers but not from their fathers, because Pace could relate to the magic of nature and the Magician, Luna’s father, knew everything about magic. The mothers were virtual twins in beauty, though they were, like the girls, of different generations. But they had no such perceptions and seemed too busy with practical matters to be concerned with them. Luna’s mother Blenda spent most of her time assisting the Magician, who was doing ever more obscure research in magic, while Orb’s mother Niobe did the laundry and shopping and meals and reading stories. Luna came to regard Niobe as