Blue Moon Magic

by Dawn Thompson

  Allison expected to see the carnival spread below, but she and Cahir sat suspended in space with nothing above or below but star filled darkness. A comet flashed past, drawing its sparkling tail behind as it raced into the void.

  “So, beautiful,” Allison whispered. “Why am I here?”

  “Most come in search of something.”

  “Do they find it?”

  “Sometimes. What do you want, Cailin?”

  “I want you in my life.” Allison spoke the words, true words from her heart. But not here, her rational mind cried. I want you in my life and in my bed in the real world, not this dark, dreaming land.

  Allison laid her hand on his chest and felt his heart beat. She heard him breathe and softly laugh. “I am quite real, Cailin. The carnival is my reality.”

  But not mine. The words invaded her thoughts.

  With no sensation of movement, the carnival appeared around them and the wheel stopped. When they climbed out, it returned to its eternal revolutions among the stars.

  Cahir held her hand again and they went straight to the carnival’s heart where the carousel spun in its constant circle, all mirrors and flashing lights. The horses, not wooden at all, danced up and down, their hooves pawing at the air. Heads tossed and manes lifted in the breeze of their passage.

  Cahir stopped and his hands circled Allison’s waist. He drew her close and kissed her. His mouth was warm and sweet and her body responded in delight. No man had ever drawn that from her. All her years of loneliness and longing faded away. This is what she’d waited for.

  She ran her hands up over his shoulders and her fingers locked in his silky, midnight hair. They stood clinging to each other while the carousel’s music soared around them like a spectral tornado, isolating them in space and time.

  He broke the kiss and held his face against hers, cheek to cheek. He whispered in her ear. “This carousel stops for no man or woman. Will you ride?”

  Allison searched his face for a clue, some sign of what he wanted her to do. He offered her nothing. She straightened with resolve. If this was a test, the teacher would pass.

  “I’ll ride. Will you come with me?”

  “You must go first, Cailin.” He released her and stood back. “I will follow.”

  As Allison approached the carousel, the horses seemed to turn and stare at her with speculative eyes—questioning eyes. Their voices whispered in her mind.

  “Come and ride,” they called.

  Doubt filled her—and fear. What if she fell?

  “Then you fall,” the horses cried.

  Allison glanced at Cahir. He’d turned his face from her and stepped away.

  She swallowed hard and approached the spinning platform. One of the horses caught her eye as it passed, a pretty palomino with a gold nugget coat and cloud white mane.

  She drew a deep breath and readied herself.

  The horses raced on with increasing speed; terrifying speed like four lanes of fast moving freeway traffic.

  Another glance at Cahir.

  He’d moved farther away. She knew, beyond a doubt, she’d lose him if she didn’t act.

  The palomino approached again.

  With all her strength, she shoved fear aside and leaped for the golden horse.

  A moment of vertigo—and Cahir caught her in his arms. His laughter came louder than the music. The carousel spun around them, then out and away into the great wilderness night.

  Allison stopped thinking, stopped questioning dream or reality as he laid her down on a bed of silk in a tent filled with soft glowing light. He undressed her slowly, his lips brushing her skin until she moaned in delight. She drew a sharp breath when he removed his clothing.

  Allison ran her hands along the length of his powerful body, tasted his skin and breathed his clean masculine scent. Her own body became fluid, sliding through his fingers like velvet. They didn’t speak. There was no need. She demanded, and he responded with his hands and mouth. She gave him everything, all of herself, holding back nothing. Power rose in her, reached out to him and exploded in a rush of purest nerve shattering ecstasy.

  Paradise faded, as it always did, but this time it left her with quivering muscles and nerves on fire. Cahir lay beside her, his skin hot against hers. Even with her body completely sated and drained, the man lying with her sent waves of desire rippling through her.

  Allison snuggled against him. “This may not be real, but it’s not a dream.”

  “Everything is real,” he said. “If we wish it so.”

  “Would I ever meet you, walking down the street somewhere?”

  “Would you recognize me if you did?” He sounded amused.

  “Yes. I’ve…”

  “What?” His fingers traced her lips with remarkable tenderness.

  “You’ve been in my heart for a long time. I’ve looked for you in every man I’ve ever met.” The perfect man, the perfect lover she’d searched for and never found. She wanted a magic carnival in real life.

  He sat up and reached for something beside the bed. “I have a gift for you. Remember me when you hold it.”

  “No, I…” But she knew. She’d known all along. She couldn’t stay in this place. It wasn’t her world. Sadness washed over her in a gentle tide, but she pushed it aside so it wouldn’t cloud the time she did have with him. “Will I ever see you again?”

  “Perhaps.” Cahir handed her a fine ceramic doll, a girl in a blue dress with a smiling face and her arms full of flowers. It warmed at Allison’s touch as she turned it in her fingers.

  “This is Cailin, too,” he said. “Cailin means girl or young woman.”

  “What does Cahir mean?”

  “Warrior.”

  Allison smiled. Yes, she could see him as a warrior. She claimed his mouth and drew his body against hers. They made love again and finally, intoxicated with pleasure, she lay still in his arms.

  “How much power is in a name?” she whispered. “The Gatekeeper said…”

  “Here, under the Blue Moon, when you give your name, you give a part of your true being.”

  “And, if I gave you my name?”

  He didn’t answer. Allison knew, as she had when she leapt for the carousel, she had to make a decision—an irrevocable decision, without knowing the consequences. She moved her mouth close to his ear. “My name is Allison, my warrior … my love.”

  Cahir held her tight as dark silence drew close around them. “Your gift is more precious than you know.”

  * * * *

  “And then I fell asleep,” Allison said to Nadia. “Woke up in my sleeping bag, holding on to that doll.”

  They sat on a bench nestled in a garden of pretty spring pansies and flowering trees. The Iron Gate campus commons was unusually quiet for once.

  “Wow!” Nadia turned the Cailin doll in her fingers. “It’s beautiful. Perfect. Look at the detail.”

  Allison had kept the wilderness experience close to her heart through the winter, then she needed to talk to someone, maybe to be sure she hadn’t been hallucinating.

  “Was it a fair trade?” Nadia asked. She leaned forward, her eyes bright with anticipation of Allison’s answer.

  Allison frowned. “Fair trade? What do you mean?”

  “Allison, you gave him your name, your heart, in exchange for the doll, a solid thing that tells you he was real. If you hadn’t, I’ll bet you would believe you dreamed, might even have forgotten. It’s like a fairytale.”

  Nadia had grasped some fundamental thing Allison herself had missed. The Gatekeeper had warned her. What you give here, you leave here. What you take is yours forever.

  When she’d given Cahir her name, she’d given him a part of herself, and it had left a wound far more painful than the loneliness she’d known before meeting him. She longed for him, her warrior. Despair had eaten at her and sent her into restless days and sleepless nights that left her near exhaustion. The Cailin doll might be beautiful and perfect, but the woman who received it was not.


  Allison felt her body relax for the first time since the magic night. “I learned to jump on a speeding carousel. You have to make the leap to win the prize.”

  She handed Nadia the expensive looking parchment envelope with a gold-embossed Bellingham Academy return address. Bellingham, the premier private prep school in the northeast, where she’d applied for a job two years ago, before she came to Iron Gate.

  Nadia reached for the letter and eagerly unfolded it. She read it and her smile grew. “You are hereby commanded to appear—”

  “Commanded?”

  “No, it says requested, but you better be there. You read the rules. Probation for a full year. The old maid schoolmarm act. Long skirts, wire rim glasses, and God help you, no sex. Well, maybe just don’t let them catch you having sex.”

  “They want me there in June for summer classes,” Allison said.

  Something in her voice clued Nadia. “Oh, no. There’s another Blue Moon in June, isn’t there?” She thrust the letter at Allison. “Tell me you’re not going to throw away a fabulous academic career to look for something you know you can’t have.”

  Allison peered into her friend’s concerned eyes. Nadia cared for her, wanted the best for her. And truly, she had worked for this, earned it, her chance of a lifetime. So why did it feel so hollow and empty?

  “I’m sorry, Nadia. Bellingham is the wrong carousel.”

  * * * *

  Flash floods over the winter had gouged gullies in the dirt track she’d traveled last year, and made it impassable three miles from where she wanted to be. She’d have to park the jeep and backpack in. Even with the bare minimum for one night, it would be a heavy load, especially with essential water.

  Nadia had cried when Allison wrote Bellingham and politely declined their offer. She’d cried even harder when Allison resigned from Iron-Gate as well. The decisions, once made, set her free. As for the magical Blue Moon, she refused to speculate on the future. She still understood that she couldn’t live in Cahir’s world, but maybe she could be with him one more time, her warrior, her perfect lover.

  Allison loaded her pack and set out at a good pace. She hadn’t counted on walking so far, and she had to get there before dark when the path would grow treacherous. In the second hour, her leg muscles burned with slashes of fire and sweat soaked her clothes. She literally had to climb in places she’d driven last year. She made the last 300 yards in the dark, with only a flashlight to illuminate her way.

  Thin, high cloud cover dimmed the pinpoint stars as Allison stretched out on her sleeping bag. The Blue Moon rose, but the clouds dulled its white brilliance, too. Bad news if it rained, because she’d opted to leave the tent behind in favor of extra water. No wood for a fire either.

  The night lengthened, sliding into the silent wilderness while she marked the hours and listened for the music of the carousel. She nodded once, then jerked awake as pebbles rattled down the canyon walls below, but they only heralded the passage of some lesser desert creature going about its business of life and death. Even the coyotes held their tongues this night.

  When the Blue Moon reached its zenith and then slid through the stars toward the western horizon, Allison knew the carnival wasn’t going to come. She would remain a lonely woman searching for magic and a phantom lover. She curled up in her sleeping bag, wrapped her heart in a blanket of anguish, and cried herself to sleep.

  At dawn, she rose and prepared to make the long miserable journey back to the jeep. She drew a sharp breath when she opened her backpack. Inside, tucked in a clean shirt, was another ceramic doll much like her Cailin, but definitely male. Clutched in its hand was a single red rose.

  Cahir. He’d come while she slept, her dream lover, and left her with nothing more than a piece of cold clay that might as well be her heart. Silent and heavy with despair, she carefully packed it away, then headed toward her jeep, back to the real world, and into her uncertain future.

  * * * *

  “Miss Allie,” seven-year-old Maria, cried as she climbed off the dust covered school bus. She ran to Allison, her face shining with a gap-toothed smile. “Miss Allie, it’s my birthday today!”

  Allison laughed and hugged her. “It sure is. And we’re going to have a party after lunch, just like I promised.”

  Arizona’s Wyoame District School was the typical one-room school, if such things could be typical in the twenty-first century. Allison was teacher, principal, school nurse, and counselor. Her challenge was to educate eighteen students from six to thirteen. Some shined as bright as Iron-Gate’s gifted, but others came with problems that constantly tested her teaching skills. She’d earned their trust though, not a small thing in such an impoverished and close community.

  Wyoame’s School Board had been reluctant to hire her at first. Over qualified they’d said, but no one else wanted the job. When they’d offered her the position at half her former salary, she’d left California without looking back.

  She lived in a small mobile home behind the low concrete school building. Loneliness was still a part of her life, but it didn’t trouble her during the day. She had too much to do.

  Six more students climbed off the bus and hurried onto the playground for a few minutes of fun before the call to class. Allison waved at Charlie the bus driver as he headed out to pick up students from the ranches to the east. Sitting on a bench near the building, she could take a few minutes to enjoy the still cool air and the scent of pinon pine drifting from the hills. The mercury thermometer hanging on the wall would climb to over a hundred before noon as the incessant sun baked the land.

  A pickup truck approached and parked in the small lot, close to where she sat waiting for the school day to begin. Allison had never seen it before, and since she’d worked over the summer with Special Ed students, she knew almost everyone in town. At least everyone with kids old enough to attend school.

  Allison stood when the truck door opened and a man stepped out. Her mouth suddenly dried and she hugged her arms across her chest. Was it … ?

  No. Disappointment washed over her. This was just a man who resembled Cahir at first glance. His body was leaner, but muscled and strong, and the morning light painted his hair sun streaked brown. Not unusually handsome, but still very easy to look at. While he dressed like the local cowboys, his boots were a little too new and his shirt and jeans too pressed.

  He stared straight at her with an expression of intense astonishment. What did he see in her?

  She recovered from her initial surprise. “Hi. I’m Allison McClure. May I help you?”

  “My little girl,” he said, drawing a deep breath. He gestured back toward the truck. “She’s scared. Her mother left and…”

  A wave of dismay crashed on Allison when he said my little girl and lifted with the words her mother left. So selfish, she chided herself for wishing the trauma of divorce on a child.

  “Let me talk to her,” Allison said.

  “Thank you. I’m Richard Fallon. We just moved here. To my father’s ranch outside town. Lisa’s not used to country life.”

  “It’s an adjustment.” Allison went to peer into the truck.

  Lisa didn’t resemble her father. Six, maybe seven years old, her long blonde hair, tied with a pink ribbon, fell to her waist. She would stand out in stark contrast to Wyoame’s students with their mixed Hispanic and Native American blood.

  Lisa eyed Allison with suspicion, but she clearly wasn’t as terrified as her father believed her to be. Maybe dad unconsciously projected some of his own nervousness onto her.

  “Hi, Lisa. I’m Miss Allie. I’ll be your teacher.”

  Lisa quickly climbed out of the truck, reinforcing Allison’s impression of a smart girl, not too easily frightened. The students came from the playground, curious about the newcomer. Allison made the introductions, and they headed back with Lisa in tow. She didn’t even look at her father for reassurance.

  “I worried about that,” Richard said. “How she’d fit in.”

  “She’
ll be fine. These are good kids and it’s exciting when we get a new student. Are you going to pick Lisa up, or should I put her on the bus? Classes end at three-thirty.”

  “I’ll come get her.”

  In those few minutes filled with ordinary conversation, an odd and subtle connection had formed between her and this stranger. Not love at first sight like she’d experienced with Cahir, but a mild mutual attraction that would surely pass.

  “Well, I better go,” he said. “Have to help my dad with some foals. Gold Nugget Ranch. We raise palominos. Horses.”

  “Horses. Yes, I know.” Allison found his awkwardness charming.

  That pretty much exhausted the conversation of non-intimate matters, so Allison gave him a reason to return. “Would you like to come for Lisa a little early today? There’s the inevitable paperwork to fill out, and we need to discuss her education plan. With so many different ages, each student has to have a personalized schedule. I’ll do some testing this morning and we can go over that, too.”

  He gave her such a grateful smile, she almost laughed. “Okay. About two-thirty?”

  “That’s fine.”

  He shoved his hands in his jeans pockets and drew a deep breath. “Ms. McClure…”

  “Allison, please.”

  “Allison. Well, I’ll see you at two-thirty.”

  “Two-thirty.”

  A pure vivid memory of Cahir drifted through her mind, then was replaced with the image of Richard Fallon. A poor comparison, but there was something about the man, the concerned father, that touched her.

  The school bus interrupted her thoughts as it arrived with the remainder of her students. She laid her personal hopes and dreams aside to tend to the needs of others.

  * * * *

  When Richard arrived at two-thirty, she led him into her office, a room with a large glass window looking over the classroom. It was the only thing she’d asked for when she came to Wyoame. It gave her some privacy and allowed her to give individual lessons.

  Allison sat at her desk and opened the folder she’d created for Lisa. “Lisa scored above her grade level.”

  Richard sat in a chair in front of the desk, a safe, impersonal distance. “I’ll bet you’re a good teacher. My mother said you taught at a big fancy school in California. She didn’t know why you’d come here.”