Six-year-old Ruby Rose sat on the padded floor of a classroom where she struggled to read a picture book. Everything smelled like wax and ink as her nose almost disappeared in the pages, and she underlined every verse with her finger, sounding out the words one at a time.
Luna was a timid bard
in theater, word, and song.
While huntsmen friends liked fighting,
Luna never played along.
He was scared of every creature.
He ran away from grimm.
When his team-mates said, "Huntsmen FIGHT!"
his silver eyes went dim.
The teacher who sat on a desk chair behind Ruby nodded and relaxed.
Ruby could read after all.
She halted with concentration sometimes, and she sounded out some words she'd never seen before: "theater…fighting…creature…." However, she was reading on her own, higher than the reading level of her class-mates. Listening to Mom and Dad's bed-time stories made books come easy to her.
She'd never heard this specific tale before she found it on the classroom's shelves, but the main character's eye color begged Ruby to pick it up.
One evening, Luna's team-mates said
they'd like to sit him down.
All were worried for his future
if a battle struck his crown.
They'd made a weapon for him
since he had no sword and shield:
A cavalier's new longspear
reaching cross a battlefield.
Luna shut his mouth and smiled.
His friends were being kind.
They said, "And here's a mission.
Look: your name's already signed!"
One afternoon during free time, Ruby rummaged through the clothes in her suit case getting a mouthful of worn cotton.
While she was dressed in her same sports outfit from that day's Search and Destroy game, her school uniforms were strewn on the floor. Carnation-pink dresses smothered her bed. Socks were everywhere, and some of them belonged to her room-mate.
The slim black boy from her class walked past halfway toward biting an apple. Veridian Pike stopped in the entrance paralyzed by what he saw.
His polo shirts and blazers never saw a wrinkle, but the mess before him stopped him cold.
"I'm preparing for my book report. Stop looking." Ruby banged her door shut in Veridian's face.
Their teacher called from a far off room, "Don't slam your doors."
Luna packed his blanket, mat,
and songs that he'd performed
then, with a sigh, he traveled out
feeling very ill-informed.
He hadn't walked too far
while dark clouds sprinkled rain,
when suddenly, a wicked bully
stopped him with a sword-cane.
A year ahead of Luna
(who shook like mannequins)
the bully wore a chestplate
and resembled paladins.
"Fight me," bully snarled,
tapping Luna's polearm.
"I'd rather not," and Luna
gestured skyward with alarm.
"The rainfall slicks our weapons, sir,
and mud is bound to stain them.
But how about a ballad
where you rescue towns and save them?"
"Yes, please!" The bully puffed up.
(They were, at their core, just vain.)
So Luna sang a tale about
grimm dying from their cane.
Luna moved away from them.
"You can be quite a hero
if you focus on the grimm
instead of a weak little zero."
One morning outside, the longest thing Ruby found for a longspear was a stick in the northern playground: a thin branch longer than she was tall and as wobbly as a kid was wriggly.
Yellow and orange leaves slipped off its little fingers as she whirled it around, thrust it this way and that, yelling, "Hiyyya! Hwah! Yaaar!"
She wielded it overhead where she bobbed it up and down, but her teacher called at playground's end, "Leave the branch outside."
The story continued:
Luna went alone
though the rain was getting worse
until he put up blankets
by the road where he rehearsed.
"Who dares to sound so happy here?"
an assassin asked the boy.
"They're only songs," said Luna.
"I'm a huntsman low on joy."
The woman laughed. "I can fix that.
How 'bout I end your song."
But Luna said, "You're wet out there.
Why don't you sing along?
"I've got a weather cover
if you want to dry a minute.
And plenty theater scripts and, look!
This has assassins in it."
"You're kidding right?" The woman joined,
her violence on hold.
She couldn't read the story,
but she watched his play unfold.
"Did you write this?" she asked him
once he finished curtain call.
"Assassins can be heroes, too?"
She returned to the rainfall.
Another day during Reading time, Ruby held the book up to her teacher, who was browsing shelves at the back of a classroom. Hundreds of books offered their titles along their spines: The Story of the Seasons and The Girl Who Fell Through the World and George of the Questions.
The teacher leaned back, but they shut their mouth over whatever it was they were about to say.
"Will you read this for everyone, please?" Ruby urged it toward her teacher's hands, but they didn't take it.
A chuckle broke up the teacher's words. "You've read it twice."
"You finished Bingo Bobbins, so you're picking something new to read everyone, right? Do this one next. I love it so much!"
"I can tell." The teacher pushed The Huntsman Singer back to Ruby until it was close to her chest, where Ruby clutched it tighter. "If you love it so much, it's yours. I bet your class-mates would prefer to hear you tell it."
Like the thought had never occurred to Ruby, her eyes widened and her mouth gaped into a huge O-shape.
Tell it herself.
Read it aloud on her own?
Of course, tell everyone the story!
Luna kept on walking
through that lightning thunderstorm.
At last, he visited a town
broken like the moon, deformed:
its towers toppled to the ground,
the road upended, too,
and houses messy, roofs all broken,
lanterns cloven in two.
Faces peered from windows:
citizens too scared inside.
He tip-toed searching onward,
following his spear-point guide.
What he found in town's main market
shook him in his bones and shoes.
The most ENORMOUS ursa
Had just woken from a snooze.
During one night after dinner, all five kids in Ruby's home-room built a fort out of their combined blankets and pillows. What they made covered the conversation pit in their home-room like they were several tents, drooping in the middles and forming low ceilings.
The children fit underneath, sitting cross-legged where their heads didn't quite reach the lowest droop.
Their teacher peeked inside one last time then gave Ruby a thumbs-up, before the kids were left to their own entertainment. The ceiling panels dimmed until only a few night lights around the floor level illuminated in fiery-orange. Coconut and citrus fragrance complemented an ambient ocean sound from the television. Tides rushed upon a virtual coast of sand, and like that, the kids immersed themselves in a beach-side story-night.
Ruby sat before them all and spread her arms forward. "Luna was a timid bard in theater, word, and song. While huntsmen friends liked fighting, Luna never played along." The book was spread open in front of her, and as she recited the tale, she flipped from page one to the next one and onward.
Her story completed:
The grimm revealed its rictus grin.
Luna placed his spear aside.
"Don't hurt me!" Luna cried out.
"I haven't come to fight."
Before he made another move,
three figures charged with weapons.
Slick with rain, his team-mates joined
but rushed too quick to instant heavens.
"Oh, look at them," the huntsman cried.
"I've lost my only friends,
but I don't know how to stop this grimm
from doing what it intends."
So Luna took his blanket
up the tallest peak in fear
and there he flew a banner
from the blunt end of his spear.
Illuminated by the
lightning storm that dragged him down,
the huntsman screamed the ursa's name
and summoned help to town.
Two heroes he'd inspired once
flanked the ursa left and right.
"Oh, thank you," begged the huntsman
once he joined, at last, to fight.
The bully and assassin helped
the huntsman to his home.
The storm let up next morning
and his eyes resembled chrome.
Now Luna is a hero,
the last from his whole team.
He has no need to fight at all.
He's left in peace—to sing.