Luna’s Tears

Here is an excerpt from a story I have been working on.

 

In the summer twilight of that broken morning, amid the tears shed, the spreading rays of light shone. The twinkling stars falling from her emerald eyes caught the sun, breaking its luminance in their wet prisms. Rainbowed colors flashed through the air, and dashed onto the grassy lawn.

She was soon to follow, collapsing to her knees as his betrayal replayed in her memories. Her stockings were soon soaked with the cold dew. She sobbed as the morning birds cried their lustful melodies. She hadn’t had time to think before this, hadn’t once stopped since her brother tried to kill her.

The rusted antique lamp, tethered to her belt, pressed into her side. The tears were rolling over her cheeks as she considered that night so long ago, before her dear Atlas had gone insane, when he had given her this birthday present.

A silly child’s joy had been hers, and she carried it around dutifully for days, and weeks before setting it somewhere in her room. What a strange toy for a little girl, but childhood is a strange thing. Little did she know of where or how the antique became hers, how Atlas had suffered for it.

“Killed him,” she squeaked. He told her it killed him to see that lamp. His bloody knuckles encircled a knife as he told her this, holding the lamp out to her. When she hadn’t taken it, he set it on the table and stepped away, beckoning her to reclaim the beloved item. When she picked it up, that lamp that had been hers for over a decade, she had known immediately it was different, heavier.

“I solved the problem,” he told her. “It was simple.”

Pulling out her small light-stone, she held it up to the rising sun, letting it soak in the breathtaking brilliance. She shoved the pain out of her mind a moment, looking over the great chasm. The gargantuan fissure of earth separated the two lands. The canyon was still black with shadows, and seemed like a river of darkness running across the landscape, cutting deep into the earth. Such, she fancied, looked that river separating the lands of the living and the dwellings of the dead. Such a body the lone ferryman Charon would with his oar paddle.

Daydreaming of death, she sighed. New and bitter sorrows swelled in her breast. Rising, they forced their way through her neck and into her throat. With a little mournful croak, she resumed her weeping.

Away, far away from her, the hunter likewise knelt before the rising sun. His pebble of a light-stone, held twixt the cheap twine of his necklace, shone intensely. He thought of the strange girl, the one he found wandering through the woods.

He knew what he had to, what he would, do. He had only felt this way once before. So many years ago he felt this calling—a sudden clarity of destiny—and given himself to the light. Here she was, a denizen of Lumino fleeing that sacred city. The imperative, unspoken by any words, was there. He would help this poor girl.

Luna stared out blankly at her River Styx as the sun dried it away. But the darkness remained in the halls of her mind.

“Open it,” he told her.

The lamp was designed to focus a beam of light. They were used long ago before the Prophet of the Sun came. With the handle clasped in one hand, she lifted the little tin lid.

“Look,” he said.

There was blood inside the lamp, and something else. The shock robbed her of the ability to scream as she gazed upon this, she wasn’t sure what. Wouldn’t let herself know. She still remembered what he had said.

“Happy birthday,” her breathless words repeat. All too aware of the contents of her lamp, she felt sick as its rigid edges stab her flesh.

“I solved the problem; made the pain go away.” His raving words made no sense to her in that mad moment. “I am going to fix everyone. I am going to fix you.”

That’s when he came at her, his knife flying through the air.

 

You can read other parts of this story here: Over the Wall