by John Crowley
Even though the Girl took care not to look up at the Moon’s smile, she could think about the Moon, and about whether it was one Moon or two. She could do that because she had a name to think of.
She could say to herself: “The Moon,” and even though the Sun was shining and making patterns of dark and light on the flowers and the ferns of the forest, she could see the cold, white, narrow face of the Moon and feel its silver light, and ask it questions that it would not answer.
The Boy learned this strange thing about names, too.
He found that he could sit and think about things that were not there before his face.
He could say to himself, “a Squirrel,” and the squirrel he had thought of would run around his mind, and pick up nuts in its little black hands, and eat them in its quick squirrel way.
He could say to himself, “a Stone,” and there would be a stone: not any particular stone, just a stone; a stone that was something like all the stones he had ever seen but not exactly like any one.
And, most interesting of all, he could think of the Stone and the Squirrel at the same time, and think about the many differences between them.
One afternoon the Nightingale came upon him while he was busy with this, thinking of the names of things, putting them together, and thinking about the difference between them.
What the Nightingale saw was this: he saw the Boy put his cheek in his hand and rest his elbow on his knee. He saw the Boy’s lips move, but no sound came out. Then he saw the Boy cross his legs a different way and rest his chin on his fist. He saw the Boy scratch his head, and laugh at nothing, and get up and throw himself down on the ground, and pillow his hands under his head.
The Nightingale didn’t know what the Boy was doing, and he grew curious.
“Hello there,” he sang from a branch above the Boy’s head.
“Hello, Bird,” said the Boy, looking up and smiling.
“What is it that you’re doing there?” the Nightingale asked.
“I was just thinking,” said the Boy.
“Oh,” said the Nightingale. “Thinking?”
“Just thinking,” said the Boy.
“Oh,” said the Nightingale. “What were you thinking up? Names?”
“I wasn’t thinking anything up,” said the Boy. “Not just now. I was just thinking.”
“Hm,” said the Nightingale, and he sang a few notes, because he had nothing to say.
“I was thinking of a question,” said the Boy.
“That’s clever of you,” said the Nightingale.
The Boy crossed his legs a different way. “The question is this: Why is there anything at all, and not nothing?”
The Nightingale marveled at the Boy. “That’s a good question,” he said. “I never would have thought of it.”
“But what’s the answer?” asked the Boy.
“Answer?” said the Nightingale.
“A question has to have an answer.”
“Does it?” said the Nightingale.
“Oh, forget it,” said the Boy.
“All right,” said the Nightingale, and he sang a long song.
The Boy listened to the song. He thought: Why is there anything at all, and not nothing instead? Why should there be something, instead of nothing at all? The question went on and on inside his head, and made him feel strange. The more he thought about it the stranger he felt: as though he himself did not exist.
This was the first time anyone had ever thought of this question, and from that day to this no one has ever thought of an answer: Why is there anything at all, and not nothing?
While the Nightingale sang and the Boy thought, the Girl, walking on the edges of the forest, discovered a strange thing.
The Moon was shining in the day.
The Sun had set, but it was still coloring the sky in the west. And far above the green hills the Moon had risen.
It was fatter, and smiling once again, as it had been when Dame Kind had first shown it to them. It seemed to be not quite all there, though. It was faint and very pale, and the Girl could partly see through it: she could see blue sky through its white skin.
“Hello again,” said the Moon.
“Hello,” said the Girl. She had forgotten, in her wonder, that she had promised not to talk with the Moon. “You’ve changed again.”
“Is that so?” said the Moon. Its voice was fainter and farther away than ever.
“Unless,” the Girl said, “there are three Moons: one fat one, one thin one, and one that shines in the day. Is that the answer?”
“What’s the question?” asked the Moon.
The Girl couldn’t think just what the question was. She sat down and looked up at the Moon. She thought: I am the question. For a long time she only sat and looked up, thinking: I am the question. But she could not think how to ask it.
Now a star or two was shining. The blue of the sky was darkening. And the Moon was growing brighter, more solid, more like itself.
“I’ll tell you this,” it said, rolling higher into the sky and smiling more broadly. “You and I are alike.”
“We are?” said the Girl.
“Oh, very much alike,” the Moon said.
“How are we alike?” asked the Girl.
“Would you like to know?” said the Moon. “Then you keep your eye on me.”
Now the night was deep. Around the edges of the sky the stars were numberless; but in the center the Moon was bright and put out the stars. Its silver light coated the world with strangeness. “I am strong,” the Moon said, “and so are you; but we’re more alike than that. You are beautiful, and so am I; but we’re more alike than that.”
“How are we alike?” the Girl asked. “Tell me.”
“Oh, you’ll see,” the Moon said. “Watch me come and go, and you’ll see. You’ll see it’s true.”
The Girl, sitting in the stream of the Moon’s light, and hearing its voice, knew that the Moon was right. She grew afraid. She said: “We weren’t supposed to talk to you.”
“Oh?” said the Moon. “Who told you so?”
“She,” the Girl said, even more afraid. “She told us so. She who made us both.”
“Oho,” the Moon said. “I wonder why she said that.”
“I don’t know,” the Girl said.
“I wonder,” said the Moon. “Do you think—perhaps—that there is something that I know, something she wants you not to find out?”
“I don’t know,” said the Girl.
“I wonder,” said the Moon.
“She told us everything,” said the Girl.
“Did she,” said the Moon. “Did she, now.”
“What is it that you know?” asked the Girl.
“You’ll find out,” said the Moon. “Just keep your eye on me.”
At that moment the Moon looked away. Its silver smile faded. Clouds, dark as slate and edged with lacy white, raced over the sky and across the face of the Moon.
Far away, there was a sound of thunder.
The Thunder said: “What’s going on?”
The Moon grew small, and it sped through the racing clouds as though it were being chased. The stars went out. The Girl hugged herself, feeling a cold wind blow.
The Wind said: “If I were you, I wouldn’t talk with the Moon.”
The Girl saw the Moon swallowed up in black clouds. She heard it say, as it went away: “Just keep your eye on me.”
“If I were you,” Dame Kind said (for it was her voice in the thunder, and her voice in the wind), “I wouldn’t listen to the Moon.”
The Girl was afraid, but she said: “Why?”
Dame Kind sat down with her. “Dear child,” she said. “Do you think I don’t know best? I know how you’re made, every little bit of you, every hair on your head! Didn’t I make you myself, and didn’t I make you just as you are so that you could be happy in the world I made, and give me joy in your happiness? And don’t you think then that I know what’s best for you?”
“But why?” th
e Girl asked again.
Dame Kind arose; she stamped her foot with a long roll of thunder, and she said in a loud voice: “Because I said so!”
She turned from the Girl and went away; and the rain fell in big, cold drops, pattering in the leaves of the trees and causing the birds and the animals to run and hide.
Dame Kind was puzzled and sad. Never before in all the world she had made, in all the time she had gone about in it, had she ever lost her temper and said: “Because I said so!”
But then, never before in all the world had anyone ever asked Dame Kind the question that the Girl had asked: “Why?”
The Girl said to the Boy: “The Moon does change.”
“It does?” said the Boy. They were sitting in a little cave they had found, out of the rain that fell from leaf to leaf. “How do you know?”
“I saw it again,” said the Girl. “And it was fat and big, not thin and sharp.”
“Maybe,” said the Boy, “there are three Moons.”
“No,” said the Girl. “It’s one Moon, but it changes.”
“I don’t care,” said the Boy. He still didn’t like hearing the Girl talk about the Moon.
“The Moon,” she said to him—softly, so that no one else would hear—“the Moon has a secret.”
“How do you know?”
“Because it told me,” said the Girl.
“We aren’t supposed to talk to the Moon,” said the Boy.
The Girl only took the Boy’s hand, and waited. The rain fell and fell, like tears. And at last the Boy said: “What is the Moon’s secret?”
“I don’t know,” said the Girl. “It won’t tell. But it said: Keep your eye on me, and you’ll see.”
“It’s probably not important,” said the Boy. “It’s something good to eat, or something to keep away from; or it’s the name of something we haven’t named yet.”
“No,” said the Girl. “It’s not anything like that. It’s something we don’t know, and something we couldn’t think of.”
The Boy said: “She would know what it was.” He pointed outward at the rainy world. “We’ll ask her.”
“No,” said the Girl. “She told us not to talk to the Moon. She doesn’t want us to learn the Moon’s secret.”
“Why?” asked the Boy.
“I don’t know,” said the Girl.
The Boy wondered what the secret could be. He thought it might be the answer to the hard question he had thought of: Why is there anything at all, and not nothing?
If he could make the Moon tell him the answer to that question, he would know everything. But he didn’t say this to the Girl.
He said: “Maybe, if we knew the Moon’s secret, we would know as much as she does.”
“Maybe,” said the Girl.
“And then we could do the things that she does.”
“Maybe,” said the Girl. But she didn’t think this was the Moon’s secret. She thought that the Moon’s secret was a secret about herself: something she didn’t know about herself, that the Moon knew.
But she didn’t say this to the Boy.
She said: “We can learn what the secret is. We must.”
“How?” said the Boy.
“We’ll do as it said,” the Girl answered. “We’ll keep our eyes on it, and learn.”
The Boy’s heart, for some reason, or for no reason at all, had begun to beat hard and fast. “All right,” he said. “We’ll keep our eyes on it, and see.”
And so they did.
They watched that night, and the next night, and every night from then on.
They watched the Moon change: each night it arose at a different time, and each night it grew thinner. Its fat face was worn away on one side, till it was like a melon cut in half. Its smile grew strange and its eyes were sad.
“Time eats me,” said the Moon to the Boy.
“What is Time?” asked the Boy.
“You don’t know?” said the Moon. “Then watch me, and learn.”
The next night the Moon was thinner, and the next night, thinner still. Now it had become the thin, sharp-faced Moon that looked away.
“The Moon does change,” the Boy said. “Once it was one way, and now it’s another way. On one night it’s fat, and then it grows thinner. Last night is different from tonight. Tomorrow night will be different again.”
“Different things should have different names,” said the Girl.
The difference between the way things once were, and the way things are now, and the way things will be, was the biggest difference the Boy and the Girl had yet learned.
They called the difference Time.
“Is that the Moon’s secret?” asked the Boy.
The Girl asked the Moon: “Is that your secret?”
But the Moon only answered: “Keep your eye on me.”
And still the Moon grew thinner with every night that passed. Now it was only the palest and thinnest of fingernail parings, and almost not there at all.
“I die,” said the Moon.
“What does that mean?” asked the Boy.
“Just watch me,” said the Moon, and it seemed that a silver tear stood in its eye. “Good-bye,” it said.
And the next night there was no Moon at all.
The stars glowed more brightly than they ever had, but the night was deeply dark. The Boy and the Girl could hardly see each other.
“It’s gone,” said the Boy. “Once it was, and now it’s not anymore. Once there was a Moon, and now there’s not a Moon anymore. It dies.” And he sat very close to the Girl in the fearful darkness. “That’s the Moon’s secret,” he said.
The next night was just as dark.
But on the next night, as the Boy and the Girl sat close together watching the darkening sky in the east, they saw, rising over the purple hills, as thin as could be and as pale as anything, a new Moon.
“Moon!” said the Girl in wonder. “You came back!”
“Did I?” said the new Moon. Now it faced the opposite way, and its small cold voice was smaller and colder than before. “Well, I come and I go. Ah, but it’s good to be young!”
And every night thereafter as they watched, the new Moon grew fatter and fuller. Its smile broadened and its cheeks puffed out. “Ah,” he said proudly to the Girl, “it’s good to be strong and beautiful.”
“Am I like you?” asked the Girl. “Am I strong and beautiful?”
“You’re very much like me,” said the Moon. “Look inside yourself and see.”
The nights passed. The full-faced new Moon began to shrink and lose its shape, just as the old Moon had done.
“I wane,” said the Moon. “I grow old.”
“Will I grow old?” the Girl asked.
“We’re alike,” the Moon said. “Look inside yourself and see.”
The Girl looked within herself. And she saw that what the Moon said was true: they were alike. She too would change. She was changing even now, as though she had a Moon of her own within her. She was strong and young and beautiful: and yet she too would grow old. “That’s the Moon’s secret,” she said. She had thought that the Moon’s secret was a secret about herself: and she was right.
When day came, the Boy and the Girl looked around themselves. The world seemed to be different from the way it had been.
“Everything’s changed,” said the Girl. She looked at the Boy. “You’ve changed.”
“You’ve changed,” said the Boy, looking at the Girl. “Why?”
“We’re different now,” said the Girl. “Different things should have different names.”
“Why have we changed?” asked the Boy.
“Well,” said the Girl, as the Moon had said to her, “there it is.”
“What name will you have, then?” the Boy asked.
“I will be the Woman.”
He straightened his shoulders, he lifted his chin, and he looked firmly far off. “All right,” he said. “Then I’ll be the Man.”
They took hands then, and looked at each ot
her, and felt suddenly shy, and didn’t know what to do next.
The Man and the Woman walked together in the forest. They saw that the summer’s flowers had wilted and drooped on their brown stems. They hadn’t noticed that before.
They saw a hunting hawk fall from the sky on a brown mouse, and they heard a tiny shriek as the mouse was speared by the hawk’s sharp claws.
They saw a frog on a lily pad shoot out its long tongue, catch a careless dragonfly, and eat it. And they saw a heron step up silently on long legs behind the frog, catch it in its beak, and swallow it.
They kicked the dry brown leaves underfoot, leaves that had once danced green and dewy on the branches of the trees.
“Everything’s changed,” the Woman said.
“Nothing lasts,” the Man said. He took the Woman’s hand in his. “For everything, there was a time before it was alive, and a time after it isn’t alive anymore.”
Bigger than the difference between a Squirrel and a Stone, bigger than the difference between Night and Day, was the difference between being alive and not being alive anymore.
They called the difference Death.
“I die,” said the Moon to the Woman that night. It had grown as thin as thin, and was almost not there.
“Will I die?” asked the Woman, and the Moon didn’t answer; but she needed only to look inside herself to know.
She looked up, and blinked the tears away that had come into her eyes. “Oh, look!” she said. “Look, look!”
For she could see, as the old Moon rolled away, that held within its long, long arms was the new Moon that would come to be in its place. It wasn’t easy to see the new Moon; it was a pale, ghostly shadow. But it was like a promise. And the Woman knew that the promise had been made to her: for she and the Moon were alike.
“Now I know the Moon’s secret,” she said to herself, though what she knew she could never say in words.
Now through all this time the Nightingale had gone on with the business of his life: that is, singing in the day and sleeping at night, eating bugs and berries, raising his young and going about in the world to see what he could see.
One day was very much like another, as it had always been and would always be.
He didn’t know that the Man and the Woman had invented Time.