Waking the Moon

by Elizabeth Hand

  “Hello?”

  “Angelica?”

  A woman’s disembodied voice rang hollowly from the speaker. Not Dylan after all but Elspeth, her agent, calling from New York. Angelica heard traffic noises in the background: she’d be on her car phone. “I’m sorry to call so late, but there’s been some trouble.”

  Angelica’s heart stopped. “Dylan? Is he all right? What—”

  “He’s fine, Angelica. It’s not him, it’s—”

  A pause. “Last night. A bunch of your girls were at some kind of party at an abandoned house in Cape Cod. Some big gay hangout on the beach up there. I just saw it on the news. A boy was murdered, a bunch of kids found the body and—”

  “Who was it?”

  “They don’t know, the body was so mutilated—”

  “No! The girls, which girls?”

  Elspeth’s voice rose edgily. “I have no idea, Angelica. But the way they described it, I’m certain—”

  Angelica twisted her pen between her fingers, heedless of the ink spilling from its seams to stain her nails peacock blue. “Did they bring any of them in for questioning?”

  “No, of course not.” Elspeth gave a sharp laugh. She had been one of Angelica’s earliest initiates, and was now at the center of a Circle in Manhattan’s publishing district. “But they did note similarities between this death and that boy in Lubbock. And the New York Beacon mentioned Cloud.”

  “Cloud’s death was a—a horrible accident.” Angelica let her voice catch, so Elspeth could hear how the memory still upset her.

  “This kid’s death was a pretty bad accident too,” Elspeth said dryly. “Apparently the body was so mutilated they had to use dental records to identify him.” Another pause. “Do you know someone named Annie Harmony?”

  Angelica was silent. “Did you hear me?” Elspeth asked after a moment.

  “Yes, I heard you,” said Angelica carefully. “I knew someone named Annie Harmon. She was my roommate for a semester at college. Why?”

  “Well, someone named Annie Harmony may have seen what happened. She’s a singer with a big gay following; my son says she’s on cable all the time. She did a show in Provincetown last night and according to the club’s owner there were a number of your girls in the audience, he said they disrupted her encore and she was pretty pissed off. Afterward she apparently went to this party and saw something.”

  Angelica’s voice was tight. “Did she go to the police?”

  “No. But I guess she’s enough of a local celebrity that the news is all over the place—she was hysterical, screaming about black angels and some woman who saved her. Now the police want her for questioning but she’s disappeared.”

  Annie! She couldn’t lose Annie, not now! Not after so long—

  “Angelica?” Elspeth’s voice came through in an angry burst of static. “Are you listening?”

  “Of course—it’s just, well, a surprise, that’s all.”

  Elspeth snorted. “Yes, I would say a murder in the middle of a crowded party is a pretty big surprise! Pretty careless, too—a lot of people noticed your girls and boys there, and even though the gay press is trying to make this out to be some kind of queer-bashing, the local media and the national news are talking about ritual murder. They’re talking covens, they’re talking witches, Satanic rites…”

  Angelica finally gave in to exasperation. “Well, let them talk. Remember Freedom of Religion, Elspeth? Remember the Santeria decision?”

  The distorted scream of a bus’s brakes tore through the room. “This isn’t about freedom of religion, Angelica! This is ritual murder—”

  “One man’s mass murder is another man’s high mass, Elspeth. If they summoned the naphaïm no one will find anything.” Her fingers drummed at the phone’s speaker. “I’m expecting a call from my son—”

  “Maybe you can suggest to everyone that they cut back on the Circles for a few weeks—”

  “Elspeth, I’m not their Mother Superior—there are women all over the world acting on their own now! You know what it’s like—all those splinter groups. I couldn’t possibly contact them all.”

  Elspeth’s voice rang out warningly. “This is really bad timing, Angelica! You have a new book out, and the tabloids love this kind of stuff, especially in the middle of summer—tomorrow it’ll be on ‘A Current Affair’ and then you’ll have Laurie Cabot and NPR and everyone else in the country shoving microphones in your face!”

  “It won’t be a problem, Elspeth.” Angelica’s voice was disarmingly calm. “All right?”

  For a moment she heard only the drone of traffic, and faint music rising from the radio behind her. Finally Elspeth said, “I just thought you should know. Whether or not they can prove anything, the media and the public are starting to link these murders—”

  “Offerings, Elspeth, offerings,” Angelica said gently.

  “—to link these offerings, with your name. Your publisher is not happy about this at all, not one little bit.”

  Angelica reached for the disconnect button. “Thank you for letting me know, Elspeth. I have to go now.”

  For a few minutes she sat at her desk, staring at the moon outside. It was high above the cliffs now, its light falling in a shimmering curtain to cover everything, stones and tiles and pool, the twisted limbs of yucca and ocotillo and huisache.

  “Four more weeks,” she said softly, and picked up the lunula. It had grown so heavy over the last few months. It drew strength from the waxing moon; as the moon waned, the offerings made by her followers would fatten it once more, until a month from now it would be heavy as though it had been wreathed with the tiny carven images that had been buried with the bodies of the faithful so many centuries before. By then Dylan would have found the missing crescent, the little moon’s lost dark quarter. The lunula and its Mistress would be whole again at last.

  Now she felt the gravid curve heavy upon her breast. She ran her fingers across it, thinking of her beautiful son playing in the waves. She began to recite softly to herself, his favorite bedtime verse.

  They dined on mince and slices of quince

  Which they ate with a runcible spoon

  And hand in hand, on the edge of the sand

  They danced by the light of the Moon, the Moon, the Moon:

  They danced by the light of the Moon.

  Very early the next morning, Annie Harmon sat on the tiny balcony of the room she and Helen had rented at a B&B in Wilmington, Vermont. To the west stretched the Green Mountains, their peaks gilded with sunrise. Above Haystack Mountain the moon was poised to set, just a few hours past its full. Phoebes and titmice sang from birch trees in the yard below, and from Lake Whittingham echoed the wailing of a loon and its mate’s anguished reply.

  “We’ll have to let Vicki and Ed know if we want the room for another night,” Helen said gently She took her coffee cup from the breakfast tray that had been left outside their door. “It’s the Fourth of July weekend; they’ll want to rent it to someone else.”

  Annie continued to stare at the western sky. She’d showered seven times since she and Helen had fled the rave on Herring Cove Beach, trying to rid herself of the smell and taste and feel of blood. Now her skin felt as though it had been rubbed with sand, so raw and sore it hurt to move.

  “Annie?”

  “I can’t go on with the tour.”

  “You have to, Annie.” Helen’s voice was soft but annoyed; in the last twenty-four hours they’d had this conversation fifty times, at least. “You’ll be in breach of contract, besides which we still haven’t paid the mortgage—”

  “There’s money in my private savings account in Burlington. I’ll write you a withdrawal; take it and pay all the bills.”

  “You have a private savings account?” Helen sounded aggrieved. “You never told me.”

  “Now you know.”

  “But why! I mean, aren’t you going with me?”

  “I can’t. I can’t go on with this tour, and I can’t go back home with you. I to
ld you, it’s too dangerous.”

  “Dammit, Annie, why don’t you just go to the police! This is ridiculous, you can’t just—”

  “The police won’t be able to help me. The police won’t be able to help anyone if this keeps up…”

  “And you can?” Helen asked incredulously.

  “No, I’m sure I can’t. But maybe—maybe I can think of someone who can.”

  “Who? Your mystery woman back in Provincetown? All of a sudden you’ve got to run off and play Sherlock Holmes?”

  “Helen, you know that’s not what I’m doing.”

  “So tell me what you’re doing.”

  “I can’t.”

  “Always a fucking mystery. Always the fucking heroine,” Helen fumed, gulping her coffee.

  “Oh, stuff it!” But a moment later Annie was kneeling, clutching at Helen’s knee. “Oh, god—”

  Helen bent down to hug her, her eyes filling with tears. “Hush—it’s all right, sweetheart, don’t worry, it’ll be okay…”

  “It won’t be okay. Something terrible is happening, something horrible and now I’m in it but I’ll be damned if I’m gonna drag you into it with me—”

  She closed her eyes to keep from crying, but that was when the visions came: those shadowy figures looming around the boy’s ravaged corpse, darkness behind them and overhead the ghostly blurred face of the moon…

  Annie moaned, and stumbled to her feet. Overhead the sun broke over the mountain. “I can’t stay here. It’s Angelica, Helen, if you only knew what she was like!”

  “Try me.”

  “She’s just so used to getting her own way—I mean everything she wants! Men, women, boys, girls—”

  “Beauty,” Helen suggested. “Eternal youth.”

  “It’s not funny!”

  Helen finished her coffee and reached for a croissant. “So, does she bathe in the blood of virgins, or what?”

  “Helen. They killed that kid last night. And now—now she wants me. I don’t know why—I mean, after all this time—but she wants me—”

  Helen forced a laugh. “Don’t flatter yourself, sweetheart.”

  From the bedroom came the sudden hoarse shout of a telephone: an old-fashioned rotary phone to go with the inn’s 1930s decor. Two short rings and then a longer one. Annie stiffened and looked at Helen.

  “Don’t answer it.”

  “Don’t be silly. I have to answer it; it’s probably just Vicki or Ed checking to see if we want the room for another night.” Helen got to her feet.

  Briiing briiing.

  “Helen. Don’t.”

  Briiing.

  “Don’t! Nobody knows we’re here, nobody should be calling, Helen, PLEASE!—”

  “And do we want the room?” Helen glanced back as she picked up the heavy black Bakelite handset. “Hello?”

  From the porch Annie watched her. Helen’s sweet round face, the edges of her braids fuzzed from sleeping on them and her kimono falling open around her wide hips, that dark cleft and Annie’s heart aching because they hadn’t fucked, they’d fought, and now it was too late.

  This is the last time I’ll ever see her, she thought with a sort of greedy desperation. This is it, make the best of it, Annie-girl, because—

  “Annie?” In the bedroom Helen’s expression folded into fear, as quickly and neatly as a deck chair collapsing. She sank onto the bed, holding the phone out to Annie with wide eyes. Her voice faded to a whisper as she said, “It’s Fiona. From Labrys. She says…”

  …because…

  “Fiona? It’s only three A.M. out there, how the hell did she find—”

  …because…

  Helen stared at her in a daze, shaking her head. “I—I don’t understand. She says she just got off the phone with Angelica Furiano and she wanted you to know right away—the bad publicity, for some reason Angelica called and threatened them with a lawsuit, something about that boy, and you being there, and—well, they’re canceling the tour—”

  Annie yanked the phone from her lover.

  —because this is where things fall apart.

  Angelica stood before her bedroom window, watching the moon disappear behind the black rim of the world. It had been a long night. After talking to Elspeth she had called Fiona from Labrys Music, dragged her out of bed and would not let her go until she’d promised to call Annie Harmon immediately. Let Annie wonder how she’d tracked her down; let her twist in the wind for a few weeks. By then it would be too late, and no one would be talking about the police, or anything else for that matter; not unless Othiym wanted them too. Her hand rested upon the lunula at her throat, felt its warmth seeping into her fingers.

  You are the secret mouth of the world

  You are the word not uttered

  Othiym Lunarsa, haïyo!

  Already first light was striking the Devil’s Clock. Her fingers slipped from the lunula to pluck at the sleeve of her kimono, wipe a drop of sweat from her wrist.

  Dylan had never called. She knew better than to worry about that—did eighteen-year-old boys ever call their mothers? Still, it was enough to spark a small frisson of fear and unease; enough to keep her from going to bed.

  Though in truth she did not really sleep anymore. As the power of the lunula waxed, as Othiym Herself grew stronger and Angelica waned, she found that she had little need of sleep. Instead of dreaming, her waking mind burned with random images. Annie in the shower, her face raw from crying. The black angel Eisheth rising into the darkness above the Atlantic Ocean, huge and ravenous, its mouth a flaming hole, its fiery wings billowing until they were swallowed by the clouds. A Circle in a Kansas wheatfield, adolescent girls and boys with knives raised above the cowering figure of a young boy scarcely more than a child; another Circle in the old growth forest of the Pacific Northwest. Older women here, the last ragged edge of the failed separatist movement, their prey older as well, and the sound of invisible wings beating fiercely at the air. Angelica saw all these things and more; they chased sleep from her mind as though it were a gnat.

  But of Dylan she saw nothing, and that was strange. And try as she might, she could not find Sweeney Cassidy.

  From the room behind her static crackled softly. Angelica turned. She had forgotten about the radio. Whatever station it had been tuned to had gone off the air hours ago. The hissing of white noise had become part of the ambient fabric of the night. She crossed the room slowly, to the neat array of stereo equipment stacked atop an antique secretary. Her finger was poised above the OFF switch, when abruptly the static cleared.

  “Now what?” she murmured, frowning. There was a moment of silence. Then the radio picked up some distant signal. Music caught in mid-song, a sonic blur of feedback and echoing synthesizers; then a voice. An unfamiliar voice, repeating unfamiliar words in a near-monotone.

  But there was a thread of melody there as well—a familiar melody, it nagged at her, tugged at the carefully woven tapestry of memories she had cloaked herself in.

  From the long harrows of Wilshire to the Pyramids

  From the stone circles that challenged the scientists

  And the Neolithics that tread the ancient avenues

  Your children that died forevermore exist

  “Enough,” whispered Angelica. She stabbed at the OFF button. There was a gentle click, an electronic sigh; but the music did not stop.

  I have always been here before…

  The sound filled the room. Everywhere around her, the voice overdubbed so that it formed its own echoing chorus, the same voice ringing in her ears like the aftermath of an explosion.

  The childish man comes back from the unknown world

  And the grown man is threatened by sacrifice

  Whosoever protects himself from what is new and strange

  Is as the man who’s running from the past

  I have always been here before

  The song ended. As though someone had dropped a bottle of perfume, a thick fragrance filled the room, a cloying scent that made her
head ache. The smell of the festival games, when great armfuls of flowers were strewn upon the graves of all the golden athletes given to her in tribute. The smell of hyacinths.

  She could hear her own heart, her breath coming in shallow gasps. Then another sound, so soft she thought at first she’d imagined it. A ticking noise like fingers rapping at a glass.

  Angelica whirled, hands clenched at her sides. In the arch of the Palladian window, something beat against the panes. The shadow of its wings ballooned across the floor and up onto the wall behind her, but when she darted to the window she saw that it was actually quite small, no larger than her hand. She flung open the casement but before she could thrust her head outside it flew into the room. The smell of hyacinths grew overpowering, the syrupy odor so strong her tongue felt coated with it, she felt as though she were drowning in petals, stamens showering her with pollen until she could hardly breathe. She staggered back and it flew toward her, its wings slowly rising and falling, sending the faintest of currents through the warm air.

  It was a butterfly, purple and yellow, its glittering eyes fixed upon her, its antennae wafting back and forth like sea hair. It hovered mere inches from her face. When she extended one hand it floated down, gentle and hapless as a falling leaf, until it rested upon her palm.

  Angelica stared at it, the dusting of gold and violet scales think as ash upon its wings, the tiny hairs upon its legs brushing the ball of her thumb. Its wings fluttered languidly, and the smell of hyacinths flowed into something else. The smell of rain-washed earth, of burning sand and the sea at Karpathos, of coriander and red sandalwood; the smell of autumn leaves and applewood burning in the chimneys at the Orphic Lodge.

  “Oliver,” she whispered, as she drew the butterfly to her face; then crushed it between her hands.

  CHAPTER 17

  Falling

  WE WALKED OUTSIDE ON the Mall, pausing to watch a magician who made a boy sharp-eyed and brown as a weasel disappear. The boy crawled beneath a rattan laundry basket scarcely large enough to hide him. The magician, a toothless man younger than I was, uttered some words in Hindi; when he lifted the basket, the boy was gone. Dylan and I inspected the packed earth, the laundry basket, the fringed edges of the silk tent: nothing.