Lady Moon

A Fairy Tale

The moon died here once.

Grandad likes to tell me this tale.

The moon, curious as any living thing with eyes, threw on her dark cloak and came down the staircase to have a look at us. The poor thing had never seen the dark, and didn’t believe it existed.

In the darkness, you can’t see the hazards.

You can’t see the bogles, or the crawling horrors, as they watch with hungry eyes. If you’ve never seen the dark, you wouldn’t know that when one tumbles, one clutches the closest thing. For Lady Moon, it was the snags that came alive at the touch of her hand, twisting their vines around, never letting go. Fresh, mossy fingers stick until they burn. They bore into the unlucky, and as she hangs her head in defeat, she realises doesn’t know anything about the world.

Help me. Her sisters in the sky look on, their twinkling light fading in a hazy sea of fickleness.

Splash. What was that?

Tipping her hood back, she shines her light on a poor young gentleman who has stumbled in the dark, almost landing head first into the water. Shielding his eyes with a hand, he finds his way along the path of flickering light. Her golden hair shimmers, and he is a million light-years from anything he has ever known. He cuts her free and takes her back to his cottage, where he soothes her wrists with salves and bandages.

Then life is miserable for everyone else but them.

Unfettered by the absence of moonlight—the great, bright thorn in their side—the creatures of the night double, and treble, and amass numbers never seen before. Their appetites are voracious, endless pits that cannot be filled. The villagers who survive try to flee, but to where? Where there is no moon, there is no sun. They hobble home defeated, and wait to wither in the shroud of endless night.

The heart she grew when she came here is heavy, and it hurts. She doesn’t want it any more.

When she appears to them, she dazzles them, for they are more like moles now. No man apart from her man has seen anything like it. She’s a stranger to them, even if she seems familiar. That face... Get out, they cry. Leave here. In her beam of light, she can see what waits for her if she becomes human.

Now do you see? the angered stars ask. She sees. She feels. She fears her breaking heart will shatter the sky.

Her tears leave a trail of stardust when she bids her lover goodbye. Morning comes, followed by brilliant, shadowless moonlight for a time. The villagers bless the round, lovely face that banishes the terrors from their path forever. Bless you, Lady Moon.

After telling his tale, Grandad stands outside, and stares up at the moon. In his pocket, he rubs the stardust between his fingers.

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The Spider