Moonburn

by Alisa Sheckley

  Who was I kidding. Growing up, she’d probably played Resistance while the other kids were playing house.

  “So, what exactly is the plan?” Kayla asked, quickening her pace to catch up to me. There was a fine sheen of sweat on her face, and she was struggling with the pace. It was petty of me, but I was glad that there was someone here more out of shape than I was. I got most of my exercise as a wolf. As a person, I’d been neglecting my cardio.

  “I’m not exactly sure,” I said. “I think we’re probably going to try to get the drop on them.” I felt silly, saying it, but it was hard not to get swept up in the whole adventure film feel of this thing. Even if I wasn’t a kick-ass heroine, I was a guerrilla fighter, wearing a bandoleer and marching off to save my boyfriend and my friend and the town.

  “We’re probably going to get killed, then,” said Kayla, with surprising matter-of-factness.

  “Oh, I don’t know about that,” I said. “Magda and her brothers look like they know what they’re doing.”

  “I didn’t say they were going to get killed. They have guns and rifles. But I’ve got a kitchen knife, and you’ve got hypodermics.”

  “And a scissors.”

  Kayla gave me a sidelong look before going on. “I’m assuming that none of you can change—oh, stop, of course I know about all of you having lycanthropy, I had to have a test myself after, you know.” She didn’t mention Hunter’s name, but she self-consciously tucked a strand of fair hair behind one ear. “In any case, I don’t think the odds are stacked in our favor.”

  I trudged along, not saying anything. I realized now why Magda was in charge instead of me. I was a coward.

  “Hey, girls,” said Hunter, who was conspicuously on the outside of Magda’s inner circle. In his khakis and blue oxford shirt, he looked like he’d headed out for the country club and accidentally grabbed a scythe instead of a golf club. “Never thought I’d see you two getting so chummy.”

  Kayla just gave him a withering look and strode on in her white tailored shirt, little black miniskirt, and sensible shoes, a zaftig waitress on the warpath.

  When all this was over, if we were both still alive, I was going to buy that girl a drink.

  I indicated Hunter’s scythe. “What are you planning on doing with that, anyway? Going to landscape something to death?”

  “Something like that,” said Hunter, with a grin. “I figure we might need to hack our way out through the undergrowth.”

  Actually, that made sense. “I have to admit,” I began, but Magda held up her hand and shushed me. Grigore had returned, and he gave his report in breathless Romanian. In the hushed silence, I could hear all the night insects and frogs trilling and chirping. What do you have to be so happy about, I thought.

  “They are at the cavern,” Magda said, without acknowledging that I had been correct. “All right. I think we have to have a plan. The best fighters—Vasile, Grigore, Emmet, and myself—will circle around through the woods. The rest of you should approach directly through the corn. Abra, perhaps you can make a diversion?”

  I looked over at Kayla, remembering her estimation of our chances for surviving this night. “I have sedatives,” I said, “but they’re only good at close range. And all Kayla has is a knife. Maybe you want to give us at least one gun?”

  “We can’t waste the ammo,” said Magda brusquely.

  “Wait a damn minute,” Hunter broke in. He looked as though he were about to throw a major fit, and I thought, He isn’t a total prick, he’s going to argue against leaving Kayla and me defenseless.

  “What’s all this about the best fighters?” Hunter moved the scythe from his shoulder and planted it firmly in the ground. “Magda, I think you and I need to have a little talk about what exactly my role is in this relationship.”

  For a moment, I was so pissed off that I really thought about stabbing Hunter with one of my needles. The rush of anger gave me a strange pang; I missed my wolf. I hated these dark, moonless nights when my sense of hearing and smell were at their poorest.

  But we ought to be able to see the moon tonight, I thought, as Magda launched into Hunter, telling him that he was not working as a team player.

  The moon should have been just past full, and Hunter and Magda and her brothers and I should have still been feeling its pull. Of course, it was also supposed to be winter, so I hadn’t been paying attention to the particular way reality had been distorted.

  “Kayla,” I said, “do me a favor.”

  “Sure.” She looked at me a little suspiciously. “Unless you’re going to tell me to drop dead or something.”

  “Come on, Kayla, really.”

  “You have to admit, you’ve been pretty harsh. And I’ve been trying to show you that I’m sorry for how I was with you.”

  Oh, for crying out loud. “Look, if we survive the night, we can hash out all our differences. But what I need right now is for you to look at the moonstone around my neck.” Because it was a choker, I couldn’t lift it up to look at it. “Can you tell me what color it is?”

  “Sure.” Kayla leaned over to look at it more carefully. “Sort of a murky grayish blue. Why?”

  “Because it started clouding over this morning,” I said, beginning to put things together in my mind. Up until this morning, the manitous had only been able to affect things and people in their immediate vicinity. Something had given them a far greater power. Or rather, something had enhanced their natural abilities.

  Lilliana. But Lilliana didn’t have the capacity to change reality. What she could do, however, was impact people’s perceptions. A sensitive, she’d called herself, able to broadcast as well as receive. Either because she’d been coerced, or because she’d been co-opted, Lilliana was aiding the manitou.

  “Wait a minute,” I said, “I think I have an idea.”

  “Abra, no offense, but this is not exactly your area of expertise,” said Magda. “Vasile, Grigore, Sheriff—let’s move out.”

  “I think we ought to listen to what Abra’s got to say,” said Emmet, tilting his hat back to show the bottom of the tattoo on his forehead. “She was right about the cavern.”

  “Yes, but now we are about to engage in a fight with the enemy,” Magda snapped. “We are all going to be killed unless we are very clear about who is in charge.”

  “You may be in charge of them,” Emmet said, jerking his thumb at the brothers, “but Abra’s in charge of me, and I’m not budging till I hear what Abra’s got to say.”

  “What do you mean, Abra’s in charge of you?” Magda gave me a squinty-eyed look.

  I shrugged. “I have no idea what he’s talking about.”

  The sheriff placed one cowboy-booted foot up on a rock and rested his elbow on his thigh. “Let us just say that I am in her debt. Now, Abra, what did you want to tell us?”

  “The bear manitou, the guy I call Bruin, is holding my friend Lilliana. And I think he’s using her psychic abilities to cloud our minds.”

  Hunter frowned. “In what way?”

  I pointed up at the sky. “I think they’re keeping us from feeling the moon, so that the five of us can’t shift at all. And as for the weather … it feels like it’s at least eighty degrees out, which is another strike against us.”

  “Of course,” said Magda. “Wolves are not at their fighting best in high summer.”

  “But January is naptime for bears, so he’s at a disadvantage.” I pulled the cloth pack off my shoulders.

  “What’s in there?” asked Hunter.

  “I’m not sure. It was a gift from the Grey sisters.” I reached into the bag and pulled out a small bottle of what appeared to be homemade wine, and a gingerbread man, wrapped in wax paper. “I think it’s magic. I guess what we need to do is divide this up into equal portions and see if it breaks the spell.”

  Vasile said something sharp to Magda, and she replied with equal heat. After a moment of rapid-fire Romanian, Magda cleared her throat. “Vasile says that even if you are right, we cannot all sit around d
rinking wine and eating cookies.”

  “Besides,” added Grigore, “if the old women gave the food to you, perhaps it is only intended for you. If we all eat a little bit, there may not be sufficient magic to change anything.”

  “I suggest we keep to the previous plan,” said Magda, hefting her rifle onto her shoulder.

  Emmet shook his head. “I ain’t leaving Abra.”

  I was touched by the sheriff’s loyalty, but even I had to admit that Magda was right. “It’s okay, Emmet. You go with Magda’s group.”

  “I resent the implication that I am not one of the better fighters,” Hunter said, and Kayla and I exchanged looks.

  “Just go with them, Hunter,” I said. “Kayla and I have the dogs. We’ll be all right.”

  To his credit, Hunter did look a little abashed when he realized that he was leaving his former wife and lover alone. “If you want me to stay,” he began.

  We didn’t, and Hunter trotted off with the others. He wasn’t even beta in that pack, I realized; Grigore had taken that position.

  “Okay,” said Kayla, slapping at a mosquito that had landed on her bare thigh. “So what do we do now?”

  I unwrapped the gingerbread man and prodded it slightly with my finger. It didn’t giggle or protest or attempt to run away, so I brought it up to my nose and sniffed it. “I guess we eat it.” I broke the cookie in two. “Heads or tails?”

  “Tails.” Kayla took the gingerbread man’s feet and sank back down on her heels. With her high forehead and her perky nose and her apple cheeks, she looked absurdly wholesome. “You know, I never really understood the point of the whole gingerbread man story. Is it pro-cannibalism? Anticookie?”

  “Maybe it’s about tricking the trickster,” I said. “You know, like in the end, when the fox tricks the gingerbread man into jumping onto his back?”

  “That’s good,” said Kayla approvingly. She swatted a mosquito on her arm and took a bite of the left foot. “Not bad. A little damp from the heat, but still.”

  “Here’s the problem,” I said. “I’m terrified of doing this.”

  “Of eating gingerbread?” Kayla took another bite.

  “Absolutely. I’d rather be shooting at things. I’d rather be shot at.”

  “Never taken drugs, huh?”

  “No, I ate LSD by mistake when I was a kid.” Even talking about it made me nervous. I lifted up the gingerbread man’s head. “If this makes me feel anything like that, I don’t think I can do it.”

  “So give me the cookie.” Kayla held out her hand. “Listen, this isn’t laced with acid. It might be magic, but so far, it hasn’t done anything for me. But if it freaks you out too much, don’t do it.”

  “No, no, you’re right.” I lifted the cookie to my mouth, then hesitated. I didn’t even like gingerbread. Cookies that made good dollhouses didn’t necessarily make good eating, in my opinion. Closing my eyes as if I were eating some loathsome reality TV challenge food, like maggots on toast, I took a bite of the gingerbread man’s head.

  The lapdogs whined, begging for a taste, and before I could stop her, Kayla threw four crumbs to the dogs, which gobbled them up and sniffed the ground for more.

  “See?” Kayla popped the last bite of gingerbread into her mouth. “That wasn’t so hard.” She gestured at the bottle of wine. “Let’s crack the vino.”

  I took another nibble of the gingerbread man’s head and took a look at the bottle. It had one of those old-fashioned stoppers that’s attached with a little wire, and I had to use my thumbs to get the mechanism open.

  Or not. “Can you do this?” I handed the bottle to Kayla, and she opened it easily, then offered it back to me. “No, you go first.”

  She took a long swallow. “Not bad,” she decided. “Kind of tastes like communion wine.”

  I sniffed the mouth of the bottle. The sisters’ wine smelled fruity and sweet, and a little like plums. I took a swallow, and the taste brought back a very old memory, one I hadn’t thought of in years and years.

  When I’d been very little, three or four, my father’s mother had once made wine in the bathtub at our house, and I remember helping her mash the grapes. My abuela, whom I recalled as a very old woman in a black dress, had given me a little taste and then she’d gotten silly and started dancing around the bathroom in her bare feet, which were calloused and cracked like old leather. I had thought she was being very odd, with her face all serious, as if she were in pain. I hadn’t known about flamenco. “Wine and dancing,” she’d said in her thick accent, as she sat down to catch her breath. “They are both ways into the magic, comprendes?”

  I hadn’t thought of that in ages. Abuela had died when I was six or seven, and although Dad had gone to her funeral, my mother and I had remained behind. I think my parents were having some pretty serious problems by that point. Still, I wished I had gone.

  “I think we need to dance,” I told Kayla.

  “Man, are you a cheap drunk.”

  “No, I think it’s part of what we need to do—a kind of chase the clouds away dance so we can see the moon.”

  Kayla quirked one eyebrow. “O-kaaay.” She got to her feet and pulled off her heavy waitress shoes. “But don’t we need music?”

  “We can sing,” I said, unlacing my sneakers. “Pick something.”

  “It’s a wonderful night for a moondance,” Kayla sang, swaying back and forth. Despite her recently acquired plumpness, she moved with the grace of someone who had studied ballet. Then she stopped. “I feel like a prize fool.”

  “We could sing that sixties song, about moonbeams and peppermints. If we remembered the words. Or the tune.”

  “Or that Cat Stevens song, ‘Moonshadow.’”

  “I don’t think I can dance to that,” I said. “Oh, wait, I have one! ‘Dancing in the moonlight,’” I sang, snapping my fingers.

  “Oh, oh, I love that one,” Kayla said. “Dadum bark and dada bite,” she added in her musical contralto.

  “I don’t remember any more words,” I chimed in. We stopped swaying and dancing. “This isn’t working.”

  “Maybe we need to get dizzy,” said Kayla. “That’s what I do with my daughter.”

  “You have a daughter?” I stared at her, and Kayla laughed.

  “She’s six, Abra. Not Hunter’s. Dan’s.”

  “Oh.” Kayla must have been a teenager when she had her baby, I realized. And Dan had left her because of Hunter. “I’m sorry. That must have been hard, losing him.”

  Kayla shrugged. “It was the thing that scared me more than anything else—being without a man. I thought there was no point in living if there wasn’t a man around to constantly tell you that you were gorgeous and he was crazy about you. But you know what? I’m happier like this. Fat and on my own.”

  “You’re not fat.”

  “I’m heading there. But like I said, I don’t care. I may not be gorgeous and I don’t have a man, but I’m okay with it. Hey, I have an idea.” Kayla held out her hands, crossed at the wrist. “Remember how to do this? You just grab hold and spin around.”

  “Now, that I can do.” We spun and spun, and it was like being six again, when getting dizzy was like getting drunk, and we laughed as the wind picked up and whirled like dervishes with our heads tilted back as the clouds moved off.

  “I have to let go,” said Kayla, and we both collapsed on the ground, staring up at the full moon. There was a coolness in the air that hadn’t been there before; the temperature was dropping. I thought that right now, I felt closer to Kayla than I did to Lilliana.

  “I can’t catch my breath,” said Kayla.

  “But we did it.” I reached out for her hand and squeezed it. I could feel the moon’s pull on my skin. I was no longer smell blind.

  “Whoa,” Kayla said. “Did you feel that?” She had pressed her hand to her chest, and I lifted up onto one elbow to look at her.

  “Feel what?” The ground was growing colder under me, and I sat up.

  “My heart. Feels like a
bird trapped in my chest. Here,” she said, putting my hand just over her left breast. It was fluttering.

  “Maybe you ought to lie down,” I said, just as I watched Kayla’s eyes grow round with alarm.

  “There’s something in there,” she said. “There’s a bird in my chest, trying to get out!”

  “You’re panicking,” I said, holding her hands. “Your heart is racing because you’re panicking. Just take deep, even breaths.” She tried, but her eyes were bulging with panic, and her plump face was red and swollen. Swelling. Where was that coming from? I started to worry about her airway closing down.

  But then I started to feel it, too. Not my heart, beating in my chest like a bird’s wings, but the sudden feeling that I had lost connection with my body. My consciousness felt as though it had receded back somewhere in my head, and I couldn’t recall how to make my hands and legs move. The panic I’d warned Kayla against took hold of me: I couldn’t remember how to breathe.

  I had become untethered from my body, and it wasn’t like the experience from my childhood that had haunted me. It was worse. I could feel myself drifting away, lifting out of my body like a rising mist. I could see my body on the ground, and I had the strangest sense that I was looking at a favorite outfit that I had thought I couldn’t live without, an ensemble of skin and bones and hair that I had thought expressed the very essence of who I was in the world. I looked at my long ponytail, and realized how much sense of self I had invested in my hair. When I wore the wolf skin, I thought, I had more sense.

  I might wear another outfit someday, I thought as I began to drift higher. I looked up and I could see the moon, now, a small island in a vast and alien ocean. Dancing in the moonlight, I thought, and I could feel myself ripple in the breeze.

  I drifted farther up. I could see a few headlights on the roads, but there were no lights on in any houses. The electricity was gone, knocked out by the storm. That wasn’t so unusual, in the summer, but something told me that this time, the Con Ed guys wouldn’t be around in the morning to fix the lines. I was so far up now that I could see a sort of hazy ripple in the air all along the boundaries of Northside. It looked as though there was a wall of mist, but I knew that if I passed through that wall, I would feel the heavy density of realities folding in on themselves.