Waking the Moon

by Elizabeth Hand

  And when the first woman’s people migrated north, the snake went with them. In the Libyan desert it was worshiped as an avatar of the goddess. Still later it was the uraeus, the gold serpent that conferred power upon the crown of the Egyptian pharaohs, and wrapped its coils around the blessed caduceus of Innana and Hippocrates. Tame cobras slept in the palaces of the Indus queens, and nursed the godlings of the Aegean, and in Crete every house had its snake tubes, where the sacred adders and harmless vine snakes slept.

  “And now you will serve me,” whispered Angelica. “All of you…”

  She lifted her arms. Above the Devil’s Clock a crescent appeared, spare and pale as a crocus shoot. “Othiym haïyo!” Angelica cried. A ripple ran through the carpet of small things at her feet. “Oh Great Mother, it is begun.”

  Then:

  “Go now,” she said, and set the great sidewinders back upon the ground. “As Menat I command you, as Feronia and Pele and all those who rule the stones: wake the earth, free your children imprisoned there! So may we destroy the cities of men and reclaim what is ours.”

  And throwing their great coils across the shattered ground, the sidewinders departed, their rattles so loud they sent hollow echoes booming from the mesas.

  “You, scorpions,” she said next, “As Innana I command you, and Echidna and Walutahanga and all those who guard wives and concubines. Go now and hide beneath the beds of cruel and unfaithful lovers, and sting them with your tails!”

  And the little scorpions raised their pincers and clacked them together like stones, then scattered across the desert in a great army.

  “Tortoises now,” she cried, and what had appeared to be a row of boulders lumbered toward her, their heads nodding wisely on withered necks. “In the name of the nymph Chelone I call you! She who was stoned when she refused to lay blossoms at the feet of Zeus. Go now to the lakes and seas and rivers, and wake there your sleeping sisters, the kraken and leviathan and Scylla of the gnashing waves! This I command in the name of Moroch, of all those who lay too long abed from fear.”

  On and on she went. Each creature she called to her by name, and in the name of each of their patronesses she commanded them: Melissa of the bees, Arachne’s spiders, the patient ants and scarabs who had been waiting since Nefertari’s death to receive their due. All the beasts she named, all those that crawl upon their bellies and more besides, wolves and shrikes and owls and bats, every creature maligned by men because it had once been sacred to Her. And all of them answered, all of them came; and into the darkness they all raced away, to bring to all the other creatures and places of the earth her bidding.

  At last she seemed to be alone in the darkness. Above her the moon had risen into the soft summer sky, its crescent smiling down upon her and the lunula upon her breast smiling back. The air was strong with the acrid odor of ants and scorpions and the venom of rattlers, but there was another scent there too, something sweeter and yet more noisome to the woman. A faint noise sounded in the sharp spears of the ocotillo, and the dry leaves of the huisache rustled softly.

  “Who is there?” Angelica called. She turned with fiery eyes to stare into the grove of trees. “Who has not answered me?”

  There came no reply. But it seemed that a wind was stirring the huisache, though it was a wind Angelica did not feel; and then it seemed that upon the dry branches blossoms opened, blossoms pale and fragrant in the moonlight. Angelica drew her breath in sharply: the blossoms lifted from the trees, fluttered and circled the broken patio until they surrounded her, a silent rain of butterflies.

  “No!” she cried, and stamped her bare foot upon the earth, so hard that the lunula shuddered upon her breast. “I did not call you, it is not time yet—”

  “Oh, but it is,” someone said in a low voice behind her.

  Angelica whirled. “No,” she hissed.

  In the shadows stood another figure—a tall woman with dark hair and deep-set eyes. Butterflies formed a halo above her, and momentarily lit upon her shoulders before wafting off once more. She was cloaked in purple and her face, though reserved, even sorrowing, was beautiful, as beautiful as Angelica’s own.

  “Well-met, Angelica,” the woman said. She waved her hand, so lazily that a butterfly did not move from where it rested upon one finger like a topaz ring. “It’s been too long.” And though she did not smile, there seemed to be faint mockery, even laughter, in her voice.

  “We have not met,” said Angelica. But the wind that had not chilled her before, did so now.

  “Oh no?”

  The figure remained unmoving as Angelica took a step backward, her fingers covering the lunula. “Where have you come from?” she demanded.

  The woman laughed softly, then recited,

  “For years I roamed, far from the birch groves of Ida

  Until I lost myself among drifts of ice and the frozen steppes

  There I lamented in caves where ravaging beasts make their home.”

  Angelica’s fingers tightened upon the lunula. “You’re lying,” she said in a shaking voice. “I do not know you.”

  “No?” the woman replied.

  “‘But what shape is there I have not had’—”

  “No!’” shrieked Angelica. “Why are you here, you can’t be here—”

  “The boy,” the woman said simply. She slid her hands into the folds of her robe. “You’re not to harm him.”

  “The boy is mine!”

  The woman shook her head, just once. Her eyes glinted. “And mine.”

  “No,” said Angelica. “Not yours. Never, never yours.”

  “A warning, Angelica,” the dark-haired woman said in a low voice. “Don’t hurt him.”

  Angelica laughed harshly. “You have no power here, sister,” she said. She lifted her hands to the sky and glared. “Go, before my Mistress loses patience with you!”

  “You should be more careful whom you bed, Angelica.” The woman’s voice was low and threatening. “Not everyone wants to embrace an asp—”

  “Go!” screamed Angelica. Rage made a sibylline mask of her face, and her hair fell about her cheeks in tangled coils. “You—”

  But the dark-haired woman was already gone. Only, on the ground where her bare feet had stood, a sheaf of flowers trembled, and stained the desert air with the scent of hyacinths.

  CHAPTER 20

  Threnody and Breakdown

  HANDSOME BROWN LET US off in front of Dr. Dvorkin’s house, solemnly accepting the wad of bills Dylan pressed into his hand. “It’s good to see you, my man,” he said in his basso voice, and toasted us with a pint of Hennessy. “Take good care of the lady. Always take good care of the lady.” Cab Number 393 lumbered off into the darkness, trailing the strains of Idris Mohammed.

  Ninth Street was deserted, the streetlights casting their glow over the crepe myrtles and magnolias, the heaps of fallen petals that had drifted up against the curbstones. We stepped from the street and opened the wrought-iron gate that led into Dr. Dvorkin’s front yard, the little lawn overgrown with myrtle and ivy and a single huge magnolia. The air was so warm and sweet it was like drowning to stand there and breathe it; but I could hardly breathe at all, my heart was pounding so fast, my mouth seemed filled with something thick and sweet and strong, honey wine or Handsome Brown’s cognac. From the hidden garden echoed the burbling song of a mockingbird, so achingly beautiful it brought tears to my eyes.

  “Sweeney.” Dylan drew me to him, his long hair warm against my cheek. “What is it, Sweeney? You’re crying—”

  He held me gently against his chest, the two of us leaning against the magnolia. For all that his words were soft I could feel his heart pounding like my own. “Nothing,” I whispered. I laughed, wiping my eyes. “It’s just—god, I must be drunk or something, it’s just all so beautiful, and—”

  My voice caught. A warm breeze stirred the leaves of the magnolia. From its waxy blossoms scent poured like rain. “I’m—I’m just so happy,” I said, and began to sob.

  “Hap
py?” Dylan’s voice was perplexed, and when I looked up his eyes were burning, flecked with gold from the streetlamps. Panic lanced through me: what was I saying? I tried to move away, but Dylan’s arms tightened around my waist. “Happy? I’ll show you happy—”

  He kissed me again, pushing me against the tree, his hands stroking my face as I grabbed him and pulled him tight against me. I didn’t care where we were, I didn’t care who might see or hear. I couldn’t hear anything, except for his heart and breath and the mockingbird singing blissfully somewhere in the green darkness. I thought I would faint: my head was roaring but all I could feel was Dylan’s mouth and the taste of him, and everything about us hot and sweet and liquid.

  “Sweeney,” he whispered. “Oh, Sweeney…”

  We made love there, the tree wound about with ivy that tangled with Dylan’s hair and fingers, my skirt torn and scattered with bark as Dylan moved against me until he cried out and the two of us slid down, gasping, into the carpet of myrtle that blanketed the earth.

  Nothing had changed. The night was soft and darkly golden as before. In its secret haven the mockingbird still sang. Overhead the sky was starless, but I could hear the first far-off stirrings of morning, subway cars moving into Union Station, the rush of distant wheels.

  “We should go in,” I said at last. I smoothed my ruined skirt, tried to stand, and slid down again helplessly, my legs were so weak. “Jesus! Where’d you learn to do that?”

  Dylan pulled me up, grinning. “You liked it?”

  I laughed and plucked a bit of vine from his hair. “It was okay,” I said, and taking his hand started back toward the carriage house.

  “Just okay?” His voice was plaintive. “Then maybe we should practice some more…”

  And we did.

  That was how Dylan missed his dinner with Dr. Dvorkin, as well as breakfast and any invitations for lunch that might have come to him. The next morning I called in sick, for the first time in almost two years. When Dylan wondered, somewhat nervously, if he should call in as well, I just laughed.

  “Who do you think you’d call? I’m your boss, and I think you need to spend the day in bed…”

  We made love until I ached all over, until I couldn’t tell where my body ended and the damp warmth of the sheets and air and Dylan’s skin began. He was so beautiful, I really did weep, watching him as he slept late that morning, his snores vying with the soft roar of a neighbor’s lawn mower. I lay beside him and still couldn’t keep my hands from him: his skin so warm and smooth it was like marble fitting into the curve of my palm, the swell of his narrow hips where I pressed my mouth so that I could feel the bone jutting beneath my tongue. I wanted to devour him, feel his soft skin break under my teeth like a pear’s and my mouth fill with juice, sweet and hot. When I took him in my mouth again he groaned, his fingers pulled at my hair and once more we tangled together as he came, warmth spurting onto my breasts as he clutched me and cried my name aloud.

  “I guess it’s true,” I said when we finally had both slept, and awakened to find ourselves bruised and soaked with sweat and wrapped in each other’s arms. A fan moved lazily back and forth in front of a window, sending a faint coolness through the room.

  “What?” Dylan mumbled.

  “About guys reaching their sexual peak at nineteen.”

  “Yeah? Then you have something to look forward to.” He rolled over and hugged me. “My birthday’s not till August first.”

  “You’re only eighteen ?”

  He sat up, grinning. “Yup. Wanna know something else?”

  I fanned myself with yesterday’s Post. “I don’t know if my heart can stand any more.”

  “This is the first time I did it.”

  “Did what?”

  “You know.” He looked at me sheepishly, and I suddenly noticed he was blushing. “It.”

  “It?” I dropped the newspaper, shocked. “You mean, you’re a—”

  “A lot of people are,” Dylan said defensively. “I mean, people my age. And—well, I never really wanted to before. Not much,” he ended lamely, and stared out the window.

  “Holy cow,” I said, and collapsed onto a heap of pillows. “I think I need a drink.”

  I got up, padded downstairs, and got a nearly full bottle of chardonnay from the refrigerator. I found two wineglasses and some fruit that I put into a basket—a bunch of black grapes, a rather wizened orange, a couple of figs that I’d bought impulsively and at an outrageous price at Eastern Market a few days before.

  “Here,” I announced when I got back upstairs. I put the basket on the bed beside Dylan and poured some wine. “Nectar of the gods.”

  We lay next to each other and drank and ate. The sunlight didn’t slant through the windows so much as flow, ripe with the carrion scents of wisteria and gingko fruit, burning charcoal and magnolia blossom and car exhaust: the sooty green smell that is summer in D.C.

  “I love figs,” said Dylan. He bit into one, exposing the tender pink flesh beneath the dark husk. “We had fig trees at Keftiu—my father always said they were the real fruit in the Bible—you know, with Adam and Eve. But my mother said it was pomegranates.”

  “Mmm,” I said, sipping my wine. “So. You never had a girlfriend, huh?”

  He finished his fig and tossed the gnarled remnant out the window. “Not really. I went away to school a lot—prep schools, you didn’t really have a chance to meet girls. At least I never did, not in the States. Here I was like, Eurotrash, and over there I was the ugly American. And there was always my mother, you know?” He sighed and reached for his wineglass, stared into it for a long moment before going on. “My mother made me kind of paranoid about stuff.”

  “Stuff? You mean—uh, sex?” I caught myself. Angelica preaching abstinence? Anger warmed me along with the wine, but I bit my tongue and nodded. “How interesting.”

  “Yeah. I guess because I’m her only child. And AIDS, of course. And in Italy it’s a little different from here. All those Catholics—”

  A pang shot through me. It had been so long, and what with the tej, and the night—I hadn’t even thought about AIDS. Or birth control. Or anything.

  “Jesus, Dylan, you’re not, uh—”

  He looked at me with those brilliantly guileless blue eyes. “No. I never got tested for AIDS. I didn’t need to.”

  “Me neither.” I laughed, embarrassed, tried to cover for it by grabbing a handful of grapes. “I guess it’s different now, huh?”

  Dylan yawned. “I guess. But my mother always made such a big deal about my being pure. About saving myself. For some crazy sacred marriage.” He stretched, his long lean body glistening with sweat, his hairless chest taut with muscle. I found my mouth getting dry, despite the grapes, and hastily drank some more wine.

  “Saving yourself,” I repeated stupidly. The idea was ludicrous. A child of Angelica’s, saving himself for marriage?

  “Not anymore.” He leaned over and kissed me, then buried his face against my breasts. “Oh god, you smell so good—”

  We kissed, too happily exhausted to do more, and then Dylan adjusted the fan so that its scant breeze coursed over us.

  “I’m sorry—I’m probably the only person in D.C. who doesn’t have air-conditioning.”

  He shook his head. “It doesn’t bother me. It reminds me of—”

  I laughed. “I know—Keftiu.”

  “I was going to say Venice. Crete is much hotter than this. Drier, too.” He frowned and, with a swooping motion, pushed the hair from his face—a gesture that suddenly, heartbreakingly, made me think of Oliver. “Does it bother you? Talking about my mother?”

  “No.” The truth was, I’d somehow managed to forget about Angelica until he’d mentioned her—Oliver, too, until that moment. And it was strange, because being with Dylan suddenly made Oliver seem both more alive and more distant from me than he ever had. “No, it doesn’t. It just seems weird. I never would have thought Angelica would consider—well, that she’d think marriage was sacred.�
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  “My mother is very strange, Sweeney.” I started to laugh again, but Dylan’s expression was grim. “I’m not kidding. It’s not that she thinks marriage is sacred—she doesn’t. I still don’t know why she married my father. I’m pretty sure she didn’t love him. Not the way you’re supposed to love someone. Not the way—”

  He leaned over and let his lips graze mine. His hair fell across my eyes for a moment, and I felt dizzy, breathing in his scent; but then he drew back.

  “Not the way I feel about you,” he said in a soft voice, and any thought of laughing went right out of my head. He sat up again and sighed. “But she has this thing, about some sacred marriage—it’s got to do with her goddamn cult. All those women…”

  “You mean like Sun Myoung Moon, marrying off his followers in Madison Square Garden or something?”

  “I don’t know. It’s a secret, to me at least. Maybe they’re all going to marry each other. But I doubt it.” He picked up his wineglass and stared into it. “Hey, look—a bug.”

  He tipped the glass toward the window, and I watched as a honeybee crawled out. Dylan blew on it; the bee somersaulted drunkenly across the windowsill, then disappeared outside.

  “I know just how it feels,” I said, and poured him the rest of the wine. “Listen, you don’t have to talk about your mother if it—well, if it’s weird for you.”

  “It’s not weird for me.” His voice took on an edgy, aloof tone, and for a moment I felt the same sharp panic that had seized me before.

  Because crazy as it was—and it was crazy! I was twice this kid’s age, I’d gone to school with his parents, if things had gone differently I might have been one of his parents, on top of which I’d only known him for twenty-four hours, during which we’d fucked six times and I had called in sick to work!—crazy as all this was, I knew I was falling for him. Had fallen for him. Me, Katherine Sweeney Cassidy, who’d spent almost twenty years in an emotional coma—