A Relic for the Full Moon

Rose Riding knew the cathedral was at the corner somewhere. The coroner had told her she couldn’t miss it. But the rain was coming heavy, and the soaked clay of the Garland Hamlet’s outer fields slogged heavy on her boots, hem, and cloak. When she lifted her feet, a thick ‘schhhlok, schhhlok’ followed, and it sank her mood, too. She didn’t want to be out here, on Christmas Eve, looking for the big old thing, but Granny had said this was the only way. Her mother’s picnic basket was chafing something awful, pinching the wet wool of her cloak against her elbow skin. Rose slipped a thumb between the bristled reeds of the lid, gone soft with water, and looked in. A little snout poked back at her. A little whine followed that.

“I know, I know, Britches,” she said. She popped the lid back down. “I want to go home too.”

Rose had been fortunate and seen many cathedrals when her father was alive. Mr. Riding had been the best pinecone salesman in all of Garland Hamlet, and even the bigger towns beyond. “Your father could sell a pinecone better than a cow could sell milk,” Granny would say, her lips turned down as if scowling, but Rose could see the smiles behind her eyes. “He’d better not go in the woods with that.” Granny supported her oldest son’s adventures, even if she didn’t always understand them. She found the humor, and often told Rose that, if nothing else, was what the world did need.

When Ron Riding wanted to be a sailor, she grumbled and agreed. When he wanted to be a tailor, she grumbled and bought him sheers with her last apple batch. When Ron Riding said he wanted to sell pinecones, however, she’d sadly shook her head, if only to hide the laughing. Rose had been quite young herself, but even she wasn’t so sure of that one.

However, it turned out there were a great many things one could do with pinecones, in addition to decor. They made a fine pest deterrent, and an excellent bird feeder. It was the garland idea that got Garland Hamlet on board, though. His best-seller. All you had to do was string a dozen together, put them across any mantel, and lo! It even kept the faeries out.

Britches continued to whine, and Rose wanted to whine, too. There was no cathedral in this muddy old corner of the hill, and besides, in every town and city they’d been to selling cones, the cathedrals had been in the center square.

Soon, the weight of the mud was simply too much, and Rose pulled her wet hood over her eye, and flopped down on the nearest rock to breathe. She wished she’d brought water, then laughed at herself. Cupping her hands, she waited, then sipped. Waited, then sipped. “You’d be amazed, little red, what you can find by waiting,” she could hear Granny say. She sighed. Mother had passed off a flu last spring, and the hut still felt empty without her. It was a lot for a girl of Rose’s age, to lose both parents so quickly, but Granny was still there, and she had so much wisdom that she never would have gotten from her whimsical parents. Rose was so grateful, despite it all.

And then she saw it. A pink sparkle in the remnants of snow. A little glisten of too-sharp rock. A melody like the whispers of wind through a hollow stone.

“It can’t be,” she said to Britches, who whined more by the second, but she knew, of course, it must be. It made more sense now, why her family had never brought her to the cathedral before, despite always living in Garland Hamlet, and why Granny had told her not to tromp too hard in the mud. A warning, she reflected with warming regret, she’d failed to heed.

More carefully with her steps this time, Rose Riding made her way to the perhaps old, but certainly not big, cathedral at the edge of the forest. At the place where the pink light shone from stained glass windows no higher than an inch, she slumped down, let her knees squish in the mud with a satisfaction that could only be known by a girl of seven, and peered at the little stone cathedral, no bigger than a brick, or Britches’s front shoulder. She lifted the injured pup out of the basket, and he tried to run in the air. “Hello?” She said. “Is anyone there? I’m sorry, your church is very small, I cannot knock. Stay, Britches!”

And certainly, as Granny had said would happen, the little door opened. Rose’s eyes popped wide. Shuffling there, dressed all fine, with a little bishop’s cap, and a little bishop’s crook, and two tiny ears, was the most holy little mouse Rose Riding had ever seen.

“Oh, hello!” He said, teeth chittering. “You are May Riding’s granddaughter?”

She nodded, though she couldn’t speak. Granny never seemed the type to talk to bishop mice, and yet, as she thought of it, it more and more made sense.

“Well,” he tut. “Lord forgive me for not inviting you in, but surely you and he will understand in this case.” He gestured up at her size. The holy mouse had rounded figure, and an oddly dry and pleasant laugh. Rose shook her head. The rain seemed to slow in its fall once the little door opened, and yet she wondered. “How do you not drown in the rain? How does it not flood your little cathedral?”

Was it her rain-drenched imagination, or did the mouse give her a wry sort of stare?

“To God is God’s business. Now, if I am not mistaken, it seems we’ve got an afflicted little fellow on our hands. Gone into the woods alone did he?”

“Yes. He was chasing after a pinecone the neighbor-boy threw, and—”

Mouse bishop gestured. “No more.” He removed from his cloak a wrapped package so tiny, Rose had to squint to see the fine blue cloth, the silver hem. He tapped it to the wrappings on Britches’s chewed leg, and the bone at once straightened. The red-browned hair on his legs relaxed, and returned to its normal silvery white. The angry spots flashed away.

“There,” he said. “Saint Ignatius of Cheese’s skull never fails,” he chuckled. “Now you stay out of the forest on the full moon, little one, and you too.”

Girl and dog nodded as one.

“Yes, father, we won’t go in the forest again.” Britches gave a different sort of whine, and a snort with his mouth. He licked his teeth, normal-sized again, and his tongue lolled happily.

The bishop mouse gave a short little bow with his hat. “You’ll give my regards to your Granny, then.” The door creaked shut. “May Riding’s granddaughter,” she heard him chuckle to another mouse just beyond. “Throwing pinecones at werewolves.”