Berta's Table - Chapter 2 of The Pigtail Monster
Berta's Table - Chapter 2 of The Pigtail Monster
by Eva Marie Woywod and friends
Dedicated to Mom
When the last knot finally loosened and Lior’s silver hair spilled free like moonlight on water, something shifted.His own sobs no longer drowned out the others.Carried on the wind came faint, distant cries: small dreams dying, one by one, in the dark.Selene turned her great silver eyes toward the hills beyond the valley.Lior felt the same quiet pull in his chest, an ache that remembered every wound left untended.“There are more knots,” Selene hooted, soft as falling snow.“More children hiding tears in closets of night,” Lior answered.Asha, no longer the little girl who once stepped barefoot to the forest’s edge, yet still the bravest heart they knew, stood between them.She laid one small hand on Lior’s moon-bright hair and slipped the other beneath Selene’s wing.“Go,” she said, smiling through shining eyes.“I will keep the valley glowing until you come home.And I will teach every child here how to see the hidden tears, those trembling reflections that whisper:You are not alone.You are Love.You are Loved.”A single tear traced her cheek, bright as a star.Then Lior and Selene turned and walked into the night on a mission with no end.They travel by starlight, quieter than breath.Selene flies ahead, searching with moon-wide eyes for any child curling small, shoulders folded inward like broken wings.When she finds one, she gives a single low call, the softest sound in the world.Lior arrives like moving starlight.He kneels so the child can see he is not tall and frightening, only kind, and unafraid of tears.Tears cleanse the soul, he tells them gently.He whispers the story of Asha and Kelly, of the love that loosened the knots that once choked his own voice and buried a child’s dreams.“You are not alone,” he says. “Others have stood where you stand now.Speak your fear. Name the darkness.It was never yours to carry alone.”Sometimes the child can only cry.Lior gathers those tears into his silver hair.They become tiny sparks, fairy-lit, that rise with a hush and take their place among the stars, because no tear is ever wasted.Sometimes the child is ready to speak.Then Selene folds her great wings around them like the safest room ever built, and Lior listens until the very last word falls.When it is finished, he leaves one gentle silver strand on their pillow.Selene leaves one soft white feather beneath it.Wherever they go, valleys begin to glow.One by one, then faster and faster, rose-gold and silver light rises from houses, forests, cities, from forgotten places deep in the woods or beneath the bridges of night.The glow leaps from heart to heart like tender wildfire.The work is heavy.Some nights it almost empties them.But they are never alone.There is a sturdy, round woman the forest whispers about, the one who keeps fairies in old milk cans among her flax and flowers.Her garden is a lighthouse.Her kitchen never sleeps.Her name is Berta, which means the Bright One, and every warrior of the night knows where to go when the heart grows faint.There, little people no taller than teacups help her ladle starlight soup and moon-milk bread, feeding Selene’s wings and Lior’s tired soul until they can stand tall again.So if you ever wake in the dark and feel the faintest brush of moonlight on your cheek,or see two quiet lights at your window,or find a silver strand and a white feather on your pillow in the morning…Close your eyes.Smile.Say a small prayer that Lior and Selene make it safely back to Berta’s table.Their vow is simple and impossible:to reach every child still waiting to be seen, heard, loved.No knot is forever.No tear is forgotten.There is always someone coming,with moonlight in their hairand memory in their wings.Goodnight, brave one.Listen.They are closer than they were yesterday
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For Grandma - Bertha Woywod nee Keuchel - Born 1898
Rosengarth, East Prussia
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