Circle of the Moon

by H. P. Mallory

  White tufts of sky began to fall. I squinted at the growing specks. My eyes widened curiously. Tingling warmth spread through my chest. It expanded out, invigorating the blood in my limbs. I stared at the sky in awe. The feeling overwhelmed me. I wasn’t sure I’d be able to move if I tried. But I was too enchanted by the sky to care.

  Is that snow? I started to question it. How could there be snow in such a warm and pleasant place. Then the first snowflake melted against my skin…

  It was instant, like an ice cube on a scalding sidewalk. Crystal cool, blissful, and utterly invigorating. My eyes rolled back in my head, and my eyelids fluttered closed. The snow fell faster. Light, puffy tufts that turned to glittering water on impact. It beaded off my thighs, tiny streams of cold relief.

  I let out a contented sigh, opening my eyes. The sky was solid blue, spotted with a few perfectly white clouds.

  The air smelled sweet. It cradled me with soft pressure, I inhaled, luxuriating in the sensation. Flowers, sunshine sparkling off a brook, the brush of a lover’s lips.

  I ran my finger through my soft honey-brown hair and stretched my arms out. I sighed contentedly. I felt like I could’ve disintegrated into the lilac-laden breeze and been perfectly happy. Pure light, that was the feeling.

  Then the sky turned black. Lightning crackled across the clouds. Rain poured down in violent sheets, striking my skin hard. I threw up my arms to shield my eyes. The rain hardened to ice. Like jagged pebbles shot down from the sky.

  What the hell? I glared up at the sky through the slats in my fingers.

  The rain beat down on the poppies, forcing the grass and stems to the ground. They shriveled, folding down under the pressure. I did too.

  I tried to get to my feet, to make for the tree line. I couldn’t see through the storm, but there had to be a tree line somewhere. Maybe that’s what all those shadows were, trees twisting in the storm.

  “Bryn,” someone said.

  I gasped. My heart made a break for my throat.

  I knew that voice. Beneath the pounding rain, I heard my heart thundering in my ears. It had been ten years, but I’d know that voice anywhere.

  I tried to stand. Maybe I could catch a glimpse of my sister in the chaos.

  “Jolie!” I cried out loud. “Jolie, where are you?”

  “Bryn, can you hear me?” She spoke again.

  “Yes! Yes, Jolie! I hear you! Where are you?”

  I tried to stand. My heels sunk into the mud, and I fell back on my ass. The ground started to pull me down. I fought to get to my feet but kept slipping. Over and over, never rising above my knees.

  The mud pulled me down from behind. I slipped and fell flat on my back. The ground sucked me beneath the earth’s surface. I started to scream, but the mud rose over my face before I could. I couldn’t feel the razor wire rain anymore, just the wet, suffocating pressure of the mud on all sides of me.

  I was pulled down until I had no sense of what direction I was moving. I couldn’t breathe, and my lungs burned with the strain.

  My head burst out of a new patch of earth. I gasped, gulping air. It tasted vile, like sulfur. Thick with smoke. My lungs tightened. I coughed. The rest of my body was pushed out of the ground. I lay on my back, covered in mud. Worms crawled on my skin. My head throbbed.

  There was no rain. The sky was black and red like magma. Ash floated in the stagnant air. I pushed off the dry, cracked earth, dark rocks over calcified mud.

  “Bryn!”

  “Jolie!” I heard her again, her voice stronger now, clearer. As if she were closer to me. “Jolie! Jolie I can hear you! Where are you!”

  I crawled forward, squinting through the smoke.

  “Bryn!” Jolie let out a blood-curdling scream. My heart clenched. I scrambled to my feet, tripping and stumbling toward the sound. “Bryn! Help me!” Her screams echoed through the barren wasteland. I broke into a sprint. Jagged pebbles on the ground scraped my feet. The cracked ground sliced into my heels. Blood gushed from the wounds. I almost slipped in the burning slickness. Jolie’s screams grew louder.

  The sound could’ve split the sky if it hadn’t already been burned wide open. The magma-encrusted God that oversaw this hellscape was angry, and his fiery rage was spilling out of the volcanic sky. I tripped again, falling on my knees. Another layer of skin, gone. Ash and dirt from the air clung to the exposed bloody tissue.

  The screaming stopped.

  A cold hand clamped down on my shoulder. Spun me around. Stared at me with her stunning cornflower blue eyes... my heart nearly stopped.

  “Jolie!”

  I flung my arms around her and squeezed with all my might. Her skin was rougher, calloused. I pulled away. Took her face between my hands. Blue eyes. Bright blonde hair. Bow petal lips. Tears rimmed my lashes.

  “You’re here!” I cried. “I’ve missed you so much! You have no idea how terrible things have been without you!”

  A painful smile lit her face.

  “I’ve missed you too…”

  Her face contorted in pain. She screamed. Her eyes screwed shut tight. She collapsed to the ground, clutching her abdomen with one hand, clawing at her skull with another.

  “Jolie!” I fell with her. Made a grab for her chin, tried to meet her gaze. She writhed in agony. Tears streamed down my face. I shook her, trying to get a response. Any response. Any sign she was still alive.

  “Help me, Bryn!” she screamed. “Please, you must come and find me!”

  “Where are you? I don’t know where you are or how to find you!”

  She looked up at me then. “I’m in the Abyss…”

  “The Abyss?” I repeated, shaking my head. “Where is that? How do I find it…”

  But her cries cut me off. “Show me the way out of here! I can’t… I just can’t continue down here any longer.” Jolie’s body went limp in my arms.

  Face perfectly blank, her eyes snapped open. She stared at me, fire in her gaze.

  “Jolie, what are you talking about?” I screamed, trying to break through the haze over her eyes. “Jolie? Look at me. Don’t close your eyes!” I took a breath.

  The barren place started to combust. Before my eyes, Jolie disintegrated, her skin breaking away and floating off with the ash in the air. Screams ripped out of my throat. My body heaved with sobs. I clutched at her arms, but it was too late. Jolie broke entirely into pieces of dust.

  The ground cracked beneath me and swallowed me whole.

  I saw the red embers burst through the black sky before my head fell through.

  Then darkness swallowed me. And the ashes of Jolie were gone.

  ###

  I shot off my pillow, gasping for breath. The sheets clung to my legs, sticky with sweat. The dream still had me in its clutches. I crossed my arms, inhaled deeply. Tried to remind myself what was real, but nothing seemed to convince me I was safe.

  I shook violently.

  The images gnawed at my brain, like maggots on dead flesh.

  I’m going crazy, I thought with certainty. That’s the only explanation for it. It isn’t a sign. It isn’t an omen of doom. Jolie isn’t lost in some awful place. I’m just going batshit crazy.

  The thought was desperately hopeful. I wish I could’ve believed it, but Jolie’s screams echoed through my head. Only one coherent thought manage to slip through:

  What if that really was Jolie? What if she was reaching out to me? What if there really is such a place as the Abyss? And what if she’s in it?

  There was only one way to find out. I threw my comforter off, slipped a sweatshirt over my bare chest, pulled on a pair of leggings. My sneakers were by the door. On the way out, I poked my head into Rowan’s room and found her sound asleep. I took a deep breath and grabbed my shoes before darting down the stairs to the house’s back door.

  I walked to Mathilda’s cottage. She opened the door on the first knock.

  “Bryn.” Mathilda’s gentle eyes crinkled with concern. I wasn’t worried about waking her. As far as I kne
w, Mathilda never slept.

  I didn’t check my reflection before I left, but I could imagine I looked like hell.

  “Come in. Come in.” Mathilda reached out for my trembling hand and began rubbing warmth into my palms. “Tell me what’s weighing on you.”

  “A nightmare,” I answered as chills ricocheted through me. “Another one.” They were coming more and more frequently. It used to be that I’d have a similar dream once a year or so, but in the past year, I was having them once a month or once every other month. But none of them had felt so… real as this one did.

  Mathilda ushered me over the threshold and toward the hearth. “Oh, you poor thing. We’ll get you warmed up. Hold your hands to the fire, and I’ll brew you some tea.”

  “I’m alright, really,” I said, but she hadn’t been asking a question.

  Mathilda shuffled around, setting kettles, pouring tea, gathering blankets. She approached me with a grey wool blanket. I sat forward a bit, letting her wrap it around me.

  I felt a little ridiculous. Like a toddler who’d run to her mother’s bed after a scary dream, but I nestled into the blanket as she draped and tucked it around my shoulders. I had to admit, the blanket was very warm, and I felt a little bit better.

  She sat on the wicker chair across from me. Hands settled in her lap. Silver hair fell in gentle waves down her billowing dress. She brushed a strand out of her face, tucking it neatly behind her ear.

  “I think Jolie’s trying to reach out to me,” I said finally and my voice sounded distant, hollow. Like it didn’t belong to me.

  Mathilda’s expression didn’t change for a moment. Her brow creased, a thoughtful expression on her face.

  “You know, Bryn, grief can be expressed in many ways,” she said finally, her voice oozing patience and understanding. Neither of which were what I needed at the moment. “Sometimes we see things that feel like signs, but they’re really just little reminders of the ones we’ve lost. We see them in the natural world, perhaps even recognize the energy of their life force when we happen upon it, but it doesn’t always mean they have a message from beyond.”

  She laid her dainty hand over mine.

  “Sometimes, those little signs are simply there to help us remember.” A sympathetic smile lighted her face. “Memories can feel a lot like premonitions when they catch us unawares. It’s easy to get confused…”

  “I’m not confused, Mathilda,” I said firmly.

  She nodded, the sympathy in her eyes giving way to confusion of her own. “I know how difficult it is for you, Bryn. Losing your sister, and then your love…”

  “This has nothing to do with Sinjin!” I said, maybe with too much fire. Anger burned in my chest. Even the sound of his name could set me off if I didn’t guard against it. But the son of a bitch wasn’t going to distract me now. I needed to focus on Jolie.

  “I had a dream, Mathilda, and it felt so real... too real to ignore.”

  Mathilda stopped trying to explain. She watched, listened. Concern was palpable in her eyes, but there was a thoughtful twinkle there too as she considered the truth of what I said.

  “What sort of dream?” she asked.

  I tried to decide how to begin describing it. “I was in a meadow.” I started where the dream did. “This really beautiful poppy field with the sun beaming down. Then, it started raining, and the ground sort of sucked me in and down…” A tremor shook through me at the memory. I pushed forward, trying to recall the details. “It was like I’d been pushed through to the other side of the world, and, Mathilda... I saw Jolie there. On that... other side.”

  Bright embers flew around in the fireplace. It crackled and sparked. Reminded me of the burnt black and red sky from the place on the other side of the meadow…

  “What did Jolie say?”

  “She screamed,” I answered. “It was horrible, Mathilda. Jolie called for me, asked me to help her... She was terrified. I’ve never seen her like that before... after a minute, she sort of went limp and said…” I looked up at Mathilda.

  The gentleness in her eyes settled my nerves a bit.

  “Go on,” she encouraged.

  I let out a shaky breath.

  “She said I had to come and find her, that she wasn’t going to last much longer… why would she say something like that? People don’t have to worry about lasting when they’re dead. That’s the whole point of being dead—nothing left to survive. I don’t understand it at all, but I have this… this bad feeling.”

  “Nightmares can do that to people, you know,” she said. “It doesn’t necessarily mean…”

  And then I remembered something else, something important. “She said… she was in a place called the Abyss,” I said, my eyes going wide as I remembered.

  There was something in Mathilda’s eyes when I said the word ‘Abyss’. Something that looked a lot like recognition—but reluctant recognition. “You know what I’m talking about,” I said.

  “I do,” she answered and didn’t say anything else.

  “Well, what is this place? Where is it?”

  She took a breath. “The Abyss is a place of legend,” she answered. “There are those who don’t believe it’s even real.”

  “Jolie is there.”

  “You don’t know that for sure.”

  “I do know it,” I insisted. “Deep in my heart. Jolie reached out to me—how else would you explain me knowing she was in the Abyss? A place I’ve never even heard of.”

  “You could have overheard someone talking about the Abyss or you could have read about it somewhere and it got rooted in your subconscious mind.”

  I shook my head. “No, I don’t believe that.”

  She frowned. “You’ve been through so much already, Bryn,” she started, shaking her head. “I don’t want to see you drive yourself mad over an ill-timed bout of grief for your sister.” She tightened her small mouth into a line and looked to the fire.

  “Where is the Abyss, Mathilda?”

  She looked up at me then. Her eyes suddenly appeared so tired. As if her long life had finally caught up to her. “It’s in the Other Land, the land of the fae.”

  “In Faery?” I asked with a frown.

  “Yes, at least that is where it’s rumored to be.”

  I shook my head. “But that’s impossible.” I grew quiet as I thought about it. After Jolie disappeared that night—when she’d simply vanished off the side of the cliff and Sinjin swore to me he had no idea where she had gone, I’d returned to Faery.

  I’d gone alone, after forcing Sinjin from Kinloch Kirk with a displacement spell. Then I’d warded the premises to ensure he never stepped foot on the queen’s land again. After that, I’d left Rowan in Mathilda’s care and I’d returned to Faery. I’d searched the seemingly neverending planes of the fae lands high and low, trying to find any sign of my sister. I’d spent at least a month doing so. And I’d come up completely empty-handed. I couldn’t locate the Fir Darrig, I couldn’t locate any of the Unseelie fae and I couldn’t locate Jolie.

  It was at that point that I’d given up, that I’d figured she’d been spirited to the land of the dea—a place no living person could visit. I’d figured my sister was dead. But now… now I wasn’t so sure.

  “It’s not impossible,” Mathilda said.

  I looked up at her and shook my head. “I searched every part of Faery.”

  Mathilda held her breath for a moment. “Not every part.”

  “Not the Abyss?”

  “Not the Abyss.”

  “But, I never came across the Abyss. No one ever mentioned it! If it was located in Faery…”

  Mathilda interrupted me. “The Abyss is not a place you just enter, Bryn,” she explained. “It’s the Other World, the land in between the land of the living and the land of the dead. Even though you searched the world of the fae, you never would have found the Abyss because it’s not meant to be found.”

  “Yet, that’s where my sister is.”

  “That’s where you
think she could be but… you are simply going on the visions of a dream that could be just that and nothing more.”

  “I don’t believe that.”

  Mathilda’s mouth creased into a tight, white line. “And if this vision were true, what would that mean? What would you do?”

  I glanced down at my hands in my lap and thought about the question. “There would be only one thing I could do.”

  “Which would be what?”

  “I’d go after her,” I answered as I looked her in the eyes. “I’d try to find her and bring her back from the Abyss.”

  Mathilda sighed and looked down. We were quiet for a few seconds. “We’ve already lost Jolie,” she said, her voice soft and sad. “We can’t lose you too, Bryn. I won’t live past the loss of both of you. Old as I am, I won’t survive it. And you have a daughter to think about. Rowan needs her mother. And Emma needs her aunt. You are all Emma has left.”

  She looked at me with that motherly gaze that undid all my pride and pretensions in a single swoop. Matilda was the closest thing to a real parent I had experienced in my lifetime. But it didn’t change the fact that if there was a chance my sister was still alive and lost somewhere, I had to find her.

  I took Mathilda’s hands in both of mine, looking into her eyes intently. “I need your help.”

  She sniffled, met my eyes bravely. “I’ll help you however I can, Bryn. Always.”

  “I know.”

  I squeezed her hands. She squeezed mine back.

  “What is it you require of me?” she asked.

  I sighed, almost a laugh.

  “I need to know how I access this place, the Abyss,” I admitted.

  Mathilda closed her eyes. She had just the same crease in her brow that Mercedes used to have when she was thinking hard. Mercedes… that was a name I hadn’t thought of in a long time. The prophetess had disappeared after Jolie had and no one had any idea where.

  Mathilda’s face relaxed a bit, and the crease left. I let the memory of Mercedes wash away like rain on a window.