Searching for Mother Moon

Luki had yet to meet another that satisfied her, and so she walked alone across the desert landscape, past the gnarled metal bones of those things her grandmother used to call buildings. “Buildings”, she spit the word out as she walked along, hard to imagine thier crooked spines once reached tall and straight into the sky. She heard her grandmother’s words in her head now, reciting that same old story about the transition between the old time and the new. Before, water had run through pipes, directly into people’s homes! And you could drink it that way, no need to boil first. Luki’s mouth felt dry, and she remembered her own thirst, one of her constant companions, along with alertness and fatigue.

Nevermind, Luki thought, and shifted her pack from one shoulder to the other. She had only hours to get to the car. car. Another anachronistic word for the rusted piles of metal that littered the landscape. She knew what it once meant, thanks to her grandmother, but of what use was the idea of motion when she needed it now to stay still, as still as she could. Last night Mother Moon had her eye open just a slit, and so Luki knew that tonight was the night of Great Darkness.

Luki knew her path by heart. For many years she had traveled it once a month. She knew of a spot; a rusted car, covered in moss so thick that it looked like a rock. There was a great tree growing out of the front, through the rusted remnants of the front end, and it’s thick and sturdy limbs almost completely obscured the car’s frame.

The first Great Darkness that Luki remembered was the month her mother died. It had been her fifth spin around the sun, and also happened to be the night that Mother Moon closed her eye. Her mother, always careful before, had this night miscalculated the long walk back from her celebrations with her family, and so they were left unprotected. The very moment the sun left the horizon and the shadows on the earth grew to cover the land, dark figures descended from the hills all around them. Luki was now wise enough to know that they had been followed, but at the time she couldn’t help but feel it was her fault. She had escaped into the dark, but she watched as the shadowed figures circled her mother, sharp sparkles of light glancing off their swords. Starlight, Luki thought, because Mother Moon was not there.

Most of the time everyone was trustworthy. The small groups of wanderers that populated Luki’s homeland lived by a code. Mother Moon would watch over their sleeping children, She would provide light to hunt by, and in return the people of the earth would abide by Her laws. There was an order to things, and safety. But on the night that She closed her watchful eye, more than just darkness gathered. The deep inky black of those nights brought something evil out of the folks who populated this barren sea of sharp metal and empty lake beds. Luki shivered, remembering that night she lost her mother, and quickened her steps.

The shadows had already grown long, and the sandy trail became rocky and uneven by the time Luki entered the grove that held her sanctuary. It was a small grove of gnarled and snaking trees, protected from the blistering sun and tucked away in a crack in a ravine. A murky bright green stream bubbled past Luki. She knew better than to drink that poison, but it was good enough for the trees, and the moss that clung to everything in sight. One more quick walk below the canopy of leaves and she could climb into the safety of the rusty heap of metal and wait until morning, while the world around her went mad.

Her first sign that something was wrong came quickly. She had spotted the car just up ahead, but the moss along the branches she would use as a bridge had been disturbed. Her heart quickened and she froze, there was not much daylight left, and already she could sense that her plans were about to change. With daylight still clinging onto the shadows, rounding them out, but not for long, Luki had no choice but to keep going and stick with her plan. She pushed through the hanging moss slowly, pushing it aside like curtains, and made the final steps towards her solace, hoping that her instincts were wrong.

The car was there alright, Luki wasn't surprised by that, but the back compartment, where she had hidden one day each month since five years old, was wide open. From her angle, partially obscured by hanging moss, and with the nighttime closing in, she couldn’t see anybody. Curious, she thought, and so she watched and waited.

There was no movement in or around the car, and Luki could hear distant drums beating the rhythmic sound she had heard so many months and years before. The time was now to make a decision. She should have been safely tucked away out of sight. She knew it was only a matter of time before the drum beat stopped, which marked the beginning of the Great Darkness., that lawless time when sister turned against brother, and even mother against son. She glanced up, through the odd shaped leaves of the great old tree, wishing in vain that she could see even just a sliver of Mother Moon’s watchful eye, but it was only the pin-prick lights of distant stars. They couldn’t help her now.

The dark covered her like a blanket. For a moment, she tried to convince herself that she would be fine where she was, but she knew the hunters would be armed with lanterns. She knew she was only safe if she became darkness herself, hidden away in something that would blot out everything. She needed that car.

Urging herself on, she took two unsteady steps, then steeled herself against her fear and walked up to the open trunk of the car and looked inside.

She saw two eyes blinking up at her. A baby, swaddled and smiling. It looked happy, and well fed. Startled, Luki took a step back, turned around and used the remaining light to search for others hiding amongst the trees. She scanned and scanned and saw nothing. She and the child were alone.

Big brown eyes, pink cheeks, not ever had she seen a baby this healthy. It’s clothes were clean and fresh. It’s hair fell in auburn ringlets and framed its face. Luki noticed a heart-shaped locket around it’s pudgy neck, a necklace made for a much larger human, it dangled almost to the babe’s belly. The necklace looked well worn, it’s silver tarnished with a green tinge around the engraving that swirled on the front and back. Luki snapped it open. A tiny bundle of parchment fell out into her hand. With the final light of dusk escaping, Luki read the single word,

“Murium”, it said.

A sudden silence enveloped Luki along with the darkness. The drumming had stopped.

She gathered the child in her arms, and without even a second thought, she folded the two of them into the trunk and shut the lid.

Time would tell if the baby would be fussy. A fleeting thought saw her leaving the baby in the woods, even dropping it into the putrid gurgling mess of a stream, but she wasn’t like the others. Her memory blinked back to that night so many years ago, and with sudden clarity she knew her mother had sacrificed herself that night so that Luki may live.

Over the years, Luki had been almost happy to spend an evening crammed into the tight space of the trunk. She had even used soft pieces of soapstone to draw on the lid. She had mapped out all the constellations, and she had even drawn Moon Mother, with her valleys and pock marks. She couldn’t see it, she couldn’t see anything in that blackness, but just like the real Moon Mother, she knew it was there.

The baby stirred in Luki’s arms. It wiggled. It was as hot as a furnace, not feverish, just burning with the fire of new life. Luki’s lips pressed against its ear, “Murium,” she whispered, “is that your name?” She felt tiny fingers grasp her bottom lip. “Murium,” she cooed, “I’ll keep you safe until morning,” and long after that, she thought, and drifted off to the steady rhythm of the baby’s heart.

Luki’s eyes shot open. There was a thunk. And then another thunk. Slowly, shifting the babe to one side, Luki peered through the rust around the keyhole. There were people out there.

Thunk.

Thunk.

Two men with torches were taking turns throwing rocks at the car. In the flickering light of their torches she could see their bloody hands. They had been busy that night. Luki’s stomach sank. She could see her backpack between them, in her haste, and distracted by the baby, she had forgotten it, and now the men knew someone was there.

“What do you think, Clye?” the voice was scratchy, “I do got this bat here, shall we crush what’s left of this car?”

Through the flickering light and the narrow view, Luki could see one man stoop down and use a pitchfork to lift up her pack.

“Well I don’t know Stev,” he dangled the pack, “looks like there may be someone living in there, that’d be a shame.”

Luki heard snickering. She could hear the baby squirm awake next to her.

Luki’s head was spinning, and then the choice became clear to her. Maybe she had been saved that day so many years ago so that she could be here now, in this moment. If the baby hadn’t cried yet, maybe nothing would make it cry. Maybe it could safely make it through the night, and the next night, Luki was sure, Moon Mother’s eye would crack open and find that peaceful baby, Muriel, and work Her benevolent magic to send it home.

Luki folded the parchment back into the locket, and as gently as she could, she kissed the baby’s forehead and placed it towards the back of the trunk. Then, with only her fists and her feet as weapons, Luki opened the trunk and stepped out, clicking the lid tightly behind her.

***

The young girl walked the familiar path past the desert, past the rocky slope, into the ravine. She deftly balanced along the branches of the weathered tree, through blankets of moss until she found the rusted heap that had become her refuge. She shook her auburn locks, and absentmindedly fiddled with the heart shaped locket around her neck. She crawled into the deep bucket of the trunk. As she closed the lid, she glanced at the etching on it. There she was, Mother Moon, and she would be back again tomorrow.