Falling for the Eclipse

and other stories

I suppose the moon is a cliché. It shows up in poems, songs, and lore. I love the moon, cliché or not. There may come a day when I give up including the moon in my art, but today isn’t that day.

Are you in the path of totality for the eclipse? I am! Though they’re predicting clouds. Perhaps rain.

Somehow it feels in keeping with the year—hopes for rain fulfilled on the one day when we’d rather otherwise. Why is this so often the way?

Not everyone cares about the eclipse, of course. I over heard a woman at the bank expressing bewilderment over the excitement. She and the bank teller dismissed the hype with the apparent satisfaction of being too smart to care.

Do some folks take it too far? I don’t know. How do you judge? I’ve never seen the harm in over-the-top joy about things not hurting anyone. You may not understand it, but so what? Other people’s enthusiasms don’t need to be about you.

I find myself annoyed at people just caught up in a trend. You know, they wouldn’t care if they were on their own, but everyone else is going on about it, so they do too. But people like a sense of belonging, and I have been guilty of all of the above.

Do you need a special reason to love the moon? As a kid, I did that thing where you watch the moon from the car window and it seems to be racing across the horizon. It was an optical illusion, like the one that makes the moon look so huge soon after moonrise.

We write about the beauty of the moon, but really it is just a big dusty rock. It has no light of its own. But like us, it gets full, it has its dark side, it can show off its sharp points, and it goes through many phases while still staying itself.

Now it will place itself between us and the sun. And the effect of something comparatively small aligning with a large burning force will be able to blind us if we dare look at them directly and unprotected. No wonder people have believed the pair contained gods.

For the eclipse, I’ll share a story I may have shared a few years ago. I definitely sent it to my Patrons, and I’ll include it in an anthology I’m working on, The Fairytale Asylum. Hope you like it. It’s a completely impossible story. Happy eclipse!

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The Servant Girl & the Caged Full Moon

On a planet little known and far away live the Hammington family, their servant girl, and no one else at all. The Hammingtons are eleven—four grandparents, two parents, and five children. The twelfth soul on this tiny, moonless rock, is Olivia Sylvia Marsh, and she does all the work.   

The Hammington family enjoys having their own planet, however small. The youngest of the children often asks if perhaps they can have a moon, won’t Jupiter sell one? It has so many! More than its share. And don’t all the best planets have one? Why even Earth managed it. 

But the parents don’t care to waste the money. They’re practical people now.

Olivia doesn’t want a moon in the sky anyway, not that anyone asks her. A moon is for someone with time to gaze and wonder, and she is far too busy. 

There’s the cooking and the dusting. Oh the dusting! It is a very dusty planet, which is one reason the Hammingtons bought it so cheap. Olivia sometimes dreams of dust storms and rags that move about like rats.

There’s the laundry that takes hours. No one in the family except Grandmother Jo ever wears the same thing twice in a month. Grandmother Jo sometimes wears the same dress three days in a row, which causes the parents to yell and squabble. There’s no reason to give up being civilized, the father says. Why did she even agree to come? the mother asks. But they all know Grandmother Jo had been the first. She’d come ahead of them all to make sure everything was set for the family’s arrival. She insisted. This will be a dream come true, she’d said and which she refused to explain.

Olivia doesn’t care why Grandmother Jo vexes her family, she’s just glad to have one less dress to wash on Tuesday and Friday afternoons.

There’s the mending. Every dress and pair of trousers need a seam stitched or a bead reattached or a ribbon pressed. What good is a moon for darning socks?

There’s whatever else the family thinks to need—polishing a set of silver spoons, beating the dirt out of a heavy rug, washing a sloping skylight, or tending to a fire of trash. Olivia ignores the children’s demands for moons and cats and cotton candy trees. She is in no position to grant wishes and the comforting of children is not on her list of chores.

Grandmother Jo often mends and washes her own clothes. She fixes her own plate of food and makes her own bed. Olivia is grateful but doesn’t say. Once before she’d tried, and the old woman had told her to hold her tongue.

The entire family discourages her from speaking unless to ask which vegetable they want for dinner or the color the tablecloth should be.

One evening the youngest whines again about wanting a moon, not even a very big one, and Olivia rolls her eyes. The parents send Olivia to her room to think about what she has done. 

Olivia stretches out on her bed, stares at the rafters, and thinks about home. It isn’t her home anymore and never will be again.

She rarely allows herself to remember the apple trees in her parents’ backyard. She doesn’t like to remember her father pushing her on the swing and her mother spinning her in the air. She doesn’t like to remember the illnesses that took them. The illness was a master thief, sneaking into homes and stealing people’s breath, a little every day, until all their life was gone. 

The thief stole thousands of lives in her hometown, and millions of lives on the planet. Some folks could afford the security of medicines that kept the thief away. A few more could simply relocate, leaving the thief nothing to steal. Such were the Hammingtons. Olivia knows she is lucky to escape the thief by accepting the Hammingtons’ protection. Her parents’ land had paid for her passage and now her work pays for her keep.

Being sent to her room to think is the worst of all the punishments the Hammington’s have devised. But in her room, Olivia doesn’t think about her transgression. Instead, she thinks about her parents’ laughter and the soft blankets on her childhood bed. She thinks about the moonlight coming into the window of her childhood home and its silver light. She wishes she were too tired to think. That’s what she loves about her work. At the end of each day she falls straight to sleep, and her morning chores help her forget she has dreams. 

Restless, Olivia forces herself to her feet. She goes to the narrow window. The night sky has stars and they are beautiful. But there is no moon and therefore no moonlight. The garden is all shadow. The planet is silent and alone.

A shimmer of white catches Olivia’s attention. In the garden a figure moves from the tomato vines to the gate.  For the briefest moment, Olivia imagines she’s seeing a ghost, even though she doesn’t believe in ghosts, and so she blinks and leans against the window. Her reflection obscures her view and the figure disappears between the trees on the other side of the gate. 

Olivia goes back to her bed and stares at the rafters. But the ghostly figure loops through her thoughts. With a sigh, she goes to her door and steps into the hall. She listens to the house. Children are giggling in their far-off rooms. The dusty breezes are creaking through the attic. She assures herself she is alone and heads down the four flights of stairs. 

At the garden gate Olivia looks around for ghosts or tricks of light. But there is no moon, and she wonders what trick of light she could expect.

The woods are dark. A little ways in, however, a speck of light appears. Olivia trips and stumbles against trees but goes deeper into the woods. Soon she makes her way further into the woods than ever before and it is only then that she wonders if she is safe. Then suddenly it’s as if a light switch has been thrown. The woods fill with light and she covers her eyes. It takes time for her eyes to adjust and what she sees surprises her more than anything she’s ever seen. 

In the heart of the woods is an iron cage. The cage takes up the space of several trees. You could fit three or four grown elephants standing on top of one another inside the iron cage. But inside is not elephants nor parakeets nor anything you’d expect. Inside is a moon, a full bright moon looking for all the world as if it might burst through the bars and float away. 

“Better you than the children.” It’s Grandmother Jo. She puts a cloth in her pocket just as Olivia catches the scent of silver polish. 

“You put the moon in a cage?” Olivia asks. The glow is near impossible to turn away from and it moves like lungs taking breaths.

“Don’t tell, or I’ll have your tongue cut out.” 

Olivia comes closer. The temperature drops with each step. She puts her hands together though she has never learned to pray. But she wants to stop herself from touching the moon’s surface. The impulse pulls fiercely, but she doesn’t dare. Caged things are unpredictable. “How?” she asks. “When?” 

Grandmother Jo shrugs. “I don’t explain myself to servants.”

Olivia shivers. She can’t see beyond the moonlight. She eyes the cage. The grandmother must’ve come prepared. “This was your dream,” she whispers.

“Go straight back to the house and don’t come back here. Ever.”

Olivia nods. This is a woman who hoards the moon. “Yes, ma’am. Right away.” She turns to go, but then she pivots. She leaps forward and pushes past the grandmother, who falls. 

Olivia yanks on the latch. The iron bars creak. The cage door opens. The moon takes a deep breath and expands. 

It’s cold and blinding. Olivia runs from it all, not stopping to see what happens or to pull Grandmother Jo to her feet. Always get out of the way of anything free from a cage.

Light follows her through the trees, streaks reaching through the shadows, and Olivia runs. She reaches the house, finally stopping at the door but still not looking back. 

Entering as quietly as she can manage with her heart pounding, she hurries up the many stairs as quickly as she dares, comes to her room, and locks herself in. The darkness in her room changes. It fades. Soon, moonlight falls through the thin windowpane onto the floor, and Olivia dares to look. 

The moon sits in the sky, beautiful and full, shining as if freshly polished. Shouts from the children echo through the house. “A moon! A moon!” They can’t be contained. They dash into the garden and point. “A moon at last!”

By the time the parents and other grandparents reach the garden, the grandmother limps from the forest. The children run to her and grab her hands. “Did you do it, Grandmother Jo?” they ask. “Did you bring us the moon? Is it a present? We have been good!”

“Of course, children,” she says. “Anything for you.”

The children cheer. 

“Call for Olivia,” Grandmother Jo says. “Have her bring us lemonade and cake so we can celebrate.”

“Shall we let her see our moon?” asks the youngest boy.

The other children clap, and the oldest says, “We could blindfold her, couldn’t we, Grandmother?”

“Don’t be silly, children. How would she pour our lemonade?”

The children laugh and go to call their servant girl down from her room. But Olivia doesn’t come down. The children giggle. “Come down, Olivia! We want cake!” 

There is silence. 

“We’ll show you our mooooon!” they call in unison. They all agree they must bring Olivia down themselves. No one else knows how to make lemonade after all. 

But in the room there is no Olivia. The window is open and a bright moonbeam comes in like a silver path to the heavens. Then they hear the shouts. The adults are shouting. The moonlight is fading. 

The siblings rush to the window, pushing at each other to get a better view. The moon is moving. The moon, in fact, is leaving. 

It isn’t drifting or floating. It is moving as if it has a place to go.

Moon moves higher and higher toward the stars and other planets, and it takes its moonlight with it. 

The familiar moonless dark returns, and yet it is darker than any night they’ve ever known. The children wail. The adults fume. Grandmother Jo watches the moon disappear, one arm outstretched as if she might pull it back. Failing, she drops her arm to her side and cries. A moment later, though it takes time for anyone to notice, she falls dead. 

Olivia Sylvia Marsh never learns what happens to the Hammington family. But she travels to many varied planets and is happy to share the moonlight wherever she visits.

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Recommendations for this trip around the sun:

It’s Never Turtles All the Way Down on Fate & Fabled. Ever wonder about the story of the turtle holding up the world? Well, here you go.

And I liked this video from the Tale Foundry about the Pale Man. Who is the Pale Man? If you’ve seen Pan’s Labyrinth, you know.

I don’t have much else. Life has been upside for a while. I don’t particularly believe an eclipse is going to change all the things, but it will be a magical moment to enjoy nonetheless.

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In spite of my struggling mood and and many demands I feel obligated to meet, I’m going to take part in Story-a-Day May. (Are you joining me?) Do I have time for it? NO. Am I going to do it anyway? YES. I already have ideas involving angels and an old hotel. Wish me luck!

And thanks for reading. Enjoy the moon!