Lua, Milo Simpson ’20

Milo Simpson ’20

Lua

“A full moon is poison to some; they shut it out at every crevice, and do not suffer a ray to cross them; it has a chemical or magical effect; it sickens them. But I am never more free and royal than when the subtle celerity of its magic combinations, whatever they are, is at work.”

—Harriet Prescott Spofford, The Amber Gods and Other Stories

The moon is watching.

Her gaze filters, watery and pale, through the dark, casting blotchy shadows into Randell’s bedroom as it passes between the drapes. His gangly adolescent body is stretched out on top of his sheets, spread-eagle and restless. There is an itch crawling beneath his skin, in sweaty palms and shallow breaths.

The merle shadows of his bookshelf and his closet are vague through the tired veil of his lashes, seen through half-lidded eyes. He can’t sleep, so he stares at the indistinct expanse of his bedroom wall instead. It’s painted cornflower blue, and a poster for some police procedural from his father’s childhood is tacked above the squat bureau. All of his clothes are rumpled in his laundry basket instead of folded inside.

Something foreign is inside him, dragging a hook through his innards and making him feel sick and fitful. The light slipping into the room is hot on his skin, needling him with countless little claws when it scrapes against him. His door is shut, window too, and that makes him feel oddly confined. He doesn’t know what, but something isn’t right.

Despite everything, the feeling is not menacing or foreboding; merely uncomfortable. He doesn’t resist it. It tugs at him from within and, like ink into water, he slides into himself beneath the fervent kiss of the moonlight. She sings to him, lilting and slow.

His paws hit the floor when he rolls off the bed.

Oren knocks back another glass with trembling hands. His vision has started to swim, but the warm rush of alcohol keeps him drinking. And drinking and drinking so he can sleep. The photo of Ana stares back at him, frozen in an amber-lit memory.

She was tall and lean with tight curls and laughing blue eyes like gems. He thinks she looked like an angel, even during full moons; the spectacle of her, unearthly, graceful, drew him in from the start and never let go.

As a wolf, Ana was all rippling muscle beneath her dense coat, fangs as long as his fingers; predatory by design, and yet she was so thoroughly gentle it made him shiver. She would put her wet nose to his and tell him with her eyes, so big and brilliant, that she loved him, even like this. She would sing to him, throaty and canine, until the moon slid beneath the distant sea and the wolf left her asleep in his arms.

He loved her, too.

The bitter ache of a sob rises in his throat—Randell was only a toddler when she vanished. Before then, she had rubbed her pregnant belly and sung stories to their boy, whispered fables of the Great Old Ones that lent their brilliance to the wolves and birthed their people. He was a piece of something bigger, she promised, to Randell and Oren alike. The child indulged in the adoring lilt of her lullabies for only an instant, the long minute between infancy and first words; an amniotic haze of childhood closeness that he will never fully remember.

He won’t remember her.

That thought latches on and pulls a hiccup from him, drawing up a soft cry as he buries his face in his hands. They say time heals, but every year it only seems to get worse—the hollowness of grief only yawns deeper, and Oren doesn’t know what to do. Not with a kid like this.

He cannot carry Ana’s culture along, can’t pass it down to Randell. Not without her. He has waited for his son’s first wolf-night from the moment of his birth—at first with anxious eagerness, but now terror claws at his heart. There is nothing he can do to guide him, not through something as intuitive as a werewolf’s dreamy shift—but Randell is of age. It is coming.

There’s a market for werewolf parts, he knows. Luxurious pelts that bring good luck, ground-up claws for strength, tooth-charms for profit, diluted blood to cure all manner of ails. There is no proof, and no one is willing to chase it, but Oren is certain that they took Ana from him. He quivers at the thought of Randell being claimed, too.

His senses assault him, bleeding together despite the startling clarity of their newfound intensity. Randell gathers all four limbs beneath him, balanced on his fingers, and feels something well up deep within him— something primal, perhaps, muscle-memorized instinct that draws his gaze to the moon.

Her light shines brilliantly blue through the window, all else muted into a haze of stark sepia in the dark. The moon sings to him, urges him awake, and he takes command of his alien body to move. Warmth suffuses him; he feels safe, cradled by whispers that rain from the night sky, a shower of indistinct sensation—it makes him understand. Lapping waves of caramelsweet comfort wash over him, snug and heavy like sleep.

He can scent thick warmth in the immediate air, spiced by a thin chill of the city that creeps through the cracks in the window frame. Randell lifts his head, parting his jaws to more acutely taste the air; beneath the door he smells the stagnant must of carpet, lingering traces of sour stovetops and citrus bathroom cleaner—and something else.

He rears up onto his hind legs, curling his dexterous forepaws around the doorknob and yanking. The return to resting stance jars his shoulders, but his door’s open now, and he stalks forth onto the landing. The foreign aria of the moon impresses upon him her devotion, bittersweet regret opposed by the undying bond of their blood.

The other house-smells are thicker, unobstructed, but through the aimless mesquite of home that last metal-sharp stink cuts the air, making Randell’s eyes water painfully. His heart thuds in time with the mourning of the moon. The low throb of the heating system is acute in his ears, filtered by the distant purr of the freeway.

He scents the air again, ears pricked into the house at the bottom of the stairs. It is uncomfortable and thoroughly disorienting to descend head-first, but he manages, slow and careful despite his young clumsiness—encouraged by gossamer filaments of something like pride, not his own, but reassuring nonetheless. A second pounding sound emerges, quick and quiet, and beneath hitched gasps and airless gulps Randell realizes it is another heartbeat: his father’s.

All breath leaves his lungs when the moonlight touches his face. It buffets him at first, but then gentles, cards through his fur with glass-light fingers.

She eases into his head with a watercolor-blur of bliss and thinly-veiled remorse—she, the moon and more, leads a chorus that rattles to his very bones, reminding him of the Great Old Ones and of her unceasing life in his heart. The blue light is sapphire-sharp, and in the dark he sees her; his goddess, the moon, but also the humble vessel of his lost mother’s love.

He understands.

Round yellow eyes peer, unblinking, back at him when he finally looks up. The night has come, it seems.

Randell’s long limbs are clumsy as he edges down the stairs, paws just a sight too big, but Oren can see the vestiges of his mother’s grace lying in wait for him to grow into. Randell is lean and long-bodied in contrast to Ana’s compact strength, but powerful nonetheless. The moonlight washes through the curtains over his sable bay pelt, highlighting the reddish ticking along his sides—a seamless blend of their colors.

Oren chokes.

Randell pushes his shrewd, furry face up beneath Oren’s elbow, pinching the sleeve with needle-teeth and drawing his arm away when he reaches for the handle of whiskey on the table. Slowly, he pulls his father so that he slides from his chair to the kitchen floor, legs folded ungainly beneath him.

A warbling whine purls up from the pup’s throat, long black ears splayed anxiously against his skull. His tongue darts out to lap consolingly at Oren’s face, soft whimpers of sympathy quivering between their bodies.

Shifting, Oren pulls his son closer, gathering the little werewolf into his lap like a genuine puppy. He caresses his son’s long ears, cupping his furry cheeks and pressing gentle kisses to his sloping forehead.

“I love you,” he says, little more than a whisper in the stark emptiness of their moon-washed kitchen. Randell’s almond eyes glow dimly, reflecting deep anguish as he closes them and throws his head over Oren’s shoulder in a makeshift hug.

He cages a sob behind his teeth, but the next one escapes him easily. Oren curls his fingers like claws into the ruff of Randell’s neck, stroking shakily down the length of him. “I love you,” he babbles, “I love you, my boy, and your mother would love you so, so much—look at you, just like her—I’ll keep you safe—”

He goes on and on, scrubbing tears from his face as he goes, petrified adoration quavering in his voice. They lie entwined and sobbing until the sun rises.

A little boy’s voice reconciles, hoarse in the early-morning hush, that it’s gonna be okay—Mama told me so.