Ride the Moon: An Anthology (28 page)

“Look at that man,” I said once, pointing to an image on our home video-screen. I was trying to teach her. “How is he feeling?”

Trulia squinted at the screen. “He looks tired.”

It was a public health announcement, the Lady of Mercy and Discipline's propaganda. He was an actor playing a drug addict, wracked with regret and despair.

“Look at the quirk of his mouth. The way the corners turn down.”

“What about them?”

“It means he's very sad, Trulia.”

She sighed in disgust. “I don't even know how
I'm
feeling.”

She never understood dreams, but she dreamed as everyone does. I built a tower of numbers in the dream world, every floor built from the angles of a single digit. More often than not, when we slept side by side, she found it. “Did you build this for me?” she said, and the familiar phrase shocked me lucid.

Sometimes she refused to believe she was dreaming. Sometimes all she wanted to do in a dream was make love, which is like making love in real life, only sometimes the bed turns into a giant piano when you aren't looking.

Other nights, a light went on in her head. “Let's go flying. I've always wanted to fly.” Those were the good nights—hand in hand, soaring into the clouds.

Every morning, I asked what she had dreamed. She said, “I don't remember.” Or sometimes, “I remember a cloud.”

“We flew, Trulia. You met me in a tower of numbers. We flew over a city and into a cloud.”

“That's what
you
dreamed. I just remember a cloud.”

I tried to explain. “That must be it,” she would say, humouring me. “That must be what we did.” But she never really believed.

She promised to dream of me, but I knew it was hopeless. The tower of numbers stood empty.

Day turned to night, night to day, and the moon did not appear. My hands shook. I spilled wine and oil and had to start over. I bumped into walls and scarcely noticed. All I could think of was Trulia. Any second now, Friana might come running back in with news.

I knew my Lady would curse me for looking. I didn't care. I pulled books brazenly from the temple library, downloaded the colony's plans and schedules, searched for news with my phone. No one stopped me. I did my duties one-eyed, hunting vainly for clues.

Everyone had noticed the moon's absence by now. There were headlines, frantic arguments, tearful interviews with others who knew someone up there. Self-proclaimed scholars declared that this was nothing: it would blow over like all my Lady's moods, though perhaps not with all the human lives intact. I found nothing useful in the news, and turned to the oldest stories.

There were no stories of the moon disappearing, but there were some of the sun. The Lord of Fire and Sky, my Lady's father, sometimes tried to marry her to a god or a mortal hero. Enraged, she pushed him out of the sky.

The Un-God told us, later, that this was a lie, and that the sun's disappearance was astronomy and optics. But a story can be true and not true, just as my Lady is the moon and not the moon.

I thought about that, singing the Moon's Awakening over a moonless horizon. My Lady was the moon and not the moon. Could Trulia be alive and not alive?

One suitor, the Lord of Green and Crawling Things, was unusually persistent. He chased my Lady and sang songs of beautiful, many-limbed children. She cast him into darkness so complete that the other gods could not find him, but within the week, there he was, cavorting under a mossy rock.

“I plucked a leaf from my hair,” he said, “and it found the ground. Leaves know how to fall.” But he never chased my Lady again.

I could hardly even read. I would get through a page, or half a page, and Trulia's name would abduct me. Was she alive?

Once the Herdsman of the Dead sent a bleating messenger to ask my Lady a question. It found her asleep amid her stones, unclothed, with trickles of blood running down her divine limbs. It did not want to wake her. Bleating, trusting, too stupid to know better, it curled up against her thighs and joined her in sleep.

When my Lady woke up, panicked by the unfamiliar presence, she picked up the messenger and threw it off the moon, into a comet so cold that it broke and burned. Its bleats became screams, and it never stopped screaming.

I meditated every evening, willing myself to find Trulia somewhere in the twisted dream-world. It didn't seem to be working. Tonight I dreamed of a wailing darkness.

Cold, inexorable currents tugged at me. The gods can't enter dreams, but other dreamers can, and sometimes stranger beings. The current could have been theirs—or a part of my mind I didn't want to deal with. I thought of forcing myself awake. But what would I have then? An empty room and a head full of fear. So I let myself drift.

I washed ashore in a tower of numbers.

It was not quite like my tower. Mine was made of black numbers on a blue and salmon seashore, reaching the clouds. These were white numbers floating in the dark. Through their curving forms I could see stars.

I scrambled to my feet.

“Trulia!” The darkness swallowed my voice. I knew, deep in my gut, that she had made this place for me. “Trulia!”

No one and nothing answered me. I gathered my breath for a scream.

“Trulia!”

“I'm here.”

She was suddenly behind me, buzzing softly with concern—and relief. I turned and crushed her in my arms. “You're alive.”

“I missed you,” she said. Her hair twirled around her face, longer than I remembered. Her belly was distended in a familiar way; we had often dreamed she was pregnant. Dreams can be like that: wish for something and it's so. She nuzzled me, warm and solid. I could smell her shampoo, feel her affection all around me. “It was a whole year.”

“No it wasn't. Love, you're dreaming.”

“I'm what?”

This is how it always went. She scowled at the dream-world as though it had lied to her.

“See? The tower of numbers. You're dreaming.”

She took a deep breath, and her eyes grew a glint of mischief. She lunged and kissed me, covering me in the taste of her—the warm blush of desire inside her. “Well, if this is a dream, let's...”

Everything in me snapped to attention. I missed her so badly it hurt. But I couldn't. “Wait. I need to ask—”

She only kissed me more firmly. “Ssh. It's been a horrible month. Just let me touch you—”

“Trulia.” I pulled away, held her at arm's length. “One of us might wake up. I need to know quickly. Where are you? What happened to the moon?”

“They're going to kill me. That's what happened.” Her desire was ebbing into frustration, uncomfortable against my hands. “Why can't I touch you?”

I fought to keep my voice calm. “Who's going to kill you? Why?”

“I don't want to talk about it.”

“I know about the moon. I can help you.”

“No, you can't. You're just a dream. I'll forget you in the morning.”

“
I
won't forget. Please just tell me—”

But then her phone's cheery ringtone blasted the air. A wake-up call. She startled, and in an instant, she was gone.

As the days crawled by I decided my Lady wasn't going to curse me. If she cared, she would have done it already. Her curses are swift and unsubtle. Even when there isn't screaming and sky-falling, there is always blood.

Once, on a slow afternoon, the High Priestess knelt beside me.

“What are you looking for?” she asked. “Even if you work out what happened, what makes you think you can do anything?”

I choked down a retort.

I really didn't know. I wasn't even sure, deep down, that the Trulia in my dream was Trulia. I had often woken up with memories she didn't recognize. Just because we
could
meet didn't mean we
had
met, and with me wanting her so badly, fearing for her so badly...

I had touched her, smelled her. But I was frightened enough to doubt my senses.

“I have to know,” I said. “Even if that's all I can do.”

That night I found the tower of numbers again, and Trulia was crying.

If she was Trulia. If she was real.

I put out my arms and embraced her. She buried her face in the crook of my neck. Her grief and fear felt real. Her body was as soft as ever, though her belly was too big, and her smell...

“Tell me what's wrong. Who's going to kill you?”

She sniffed. “All of them. It's the only way to bring the earth and the stars back. They didn't want to, but your Lady said they'd die if they didn't. So they're going to launch me in a ship and let me suffocate in the blackness.”

Her fear cut worse than Friana's or the High Priestess's, worse than any fear I'd felt before. Maybe she was only dreaming that she'd die. But that would mean she'd dreamt it last time, too. More likely, this was real, or at least a reflection of something real.

“A human sacrifice.” We hadn't done that for centuries, not since the Lady of Mercy and Discipline threatened to stop healing the other gods' followers over it. Could they have regressed so far, so quickly? “What for? And why you?”

“Because it's my fault. I hurt her.”

She clutched her belly, and I suddenly understood.

It was impossible, but there was a terrible warmth mixed with the fear. Mother love. Stronger than I'd ever felt it from her before. She wasn't dreaming of being pregnant. She was really...

Of course the Lady of Blood and Stone was having a fit. She was a goddess of chastity and solitude. Pregnant women weren't allowed in her temple. To let one walk on her very body—well, that was why they'd done the tests.

I opened my mouth to protest. It couldn't have happened. She would have to have slept with a man as soon as she left, and Trulia didn't even
like
men.

Unless...

“It can't be mine. They did the tests when we stopped trying. You weren't pregnant.”

“Not then.” She gave me a wobbly smile. “But it's the Changing God, and it always takes him months to work it out. Maybe he was working it out
inside
me. Maybe your cells were there all along, changing, and...”

She really believed that. I still half-thought this was my own mind, dreaming things up. But it was the truth to her. There hadn't been anyone else.

That only made everything hurt worse. If she'd stood her ground and said
no
to the recruiters, we'd be together now, having a baby, and we'd be so happy. Now they were both going to die.

“There has to be something we can do.”

Trulia teared up again. Her despair was painful, and I had to concentrate to hear her words. “This is what she always does. You of all people should know. They won't see the earth again unless they put me on a ship and send me
nowhere
. Like the sheep in that story. Like the Lord of Green and Crawling Things.”

I stared at her.

“The Lord of Green and Crawling Things survived. He had a leaf.”

“He what?”

“He had a leaf. Leaves know how to fall.”

“How the hell does that help me?”

I was babbling. I had no idea if this even worked for mortals, but it was the only thing I had. “Listen, Trulia. This is the most important thing I'll ever tell you. You're going to wake up, and you have to remember. Find leaves.”

“What are you talking about?”

I squeezed her hands so hard that she winced. “As many leaves as you can. From the hydroponic gardens or wherever you can find them. Don't let anyone take them away. Hide them under your clothes if you have to. Then pray to the Lord of Green and Crawling Things.”

She squirmed. “I hate bugs.”

“It doesn't matter. Pray to him. I don't know that he can see you now, but the leaves will find him, sooner or later, on their way to the ground. Leaves and prayers, Trulia. Remember that. Leaves know how to fall. They'll guide you home.”

She shook her head. “I won't remember. I never remember my dreams.”

“You remember little things. Clouds. Do you remember dreaming of clouds?”

“Yes, but—”

“Then you can remember this. Find leaves. Leaves know how to fall. Remember.”

Tears leaked from her eyes, but she nodded. “Find leaves. I can remember. Find leaves.”

I held her as close as I could. We repeated it to each other, over and over, until the tower's every wall became a green, growing branch.

That day I walked around in a blur, not knowing if the dream had been real, if my words had saved her. The next night, I didn't dream, but I woke up aching. I rubbed my eyes, and my hand came back dripping red.

Blood. Pain. My Lady's curse.

But why curse me now? Why, when I'd been defying her for days?

I stumbled to the bathroom, peered blurrily into the mirror. My skin was a clotted mess. I showered and scrubbed myself spotless, but within the hour, the blood was oozing its way back.

I met the Acolytes of the Curse, outside my Lady's temple, with lowered eyes. They shook their heads. Everyone had seen this coming.

“You have to wear bandages,” said the junior acolyte, as if I didn't know. “And never go in the temple of any god. You will be alone.” She looked at me full of pity. She was even younger than Friana, and freckles dotted her nose. Her voice shrank to a whisper. “Was it worth it?”

By my Lady's rules, I couldn't answer. I wiped my bloody hands and shuffled away.

Here is the thing.

Some gods work slow. The Herdsman of the Dead's plans last lifetimes. The Changing God tries at random, for months, until he gets it right. But the Lady of Blood and Stone sees with terrible clarity. She acts in a moment.

Yet she didn't curse me when I looked in the books against her orders, when I sought Trulia in dreams, when I told her about the leaves. She didn't seem to care that I defied her. We both knew it was useless.