What the Moon Saw

by D. L. Koontz

  She continued. “I thought he was a mechanic. I remember him holding tools and working with metal. I must have transferred that into a life as a mechanic. Something more palatable, given the 2000s. And my mother! She wasn’t a botanist. She was a pioneer woman.” She gasped. “That’s it. That’s all she could have been because that was full-time work. She had a huge garden, and loved plants. She was fascinated by the plants in this area, always in search of new ones for medicines. She made teas for stomach ailments from juniper and goldenrod. Slippery elm for sore throats and witch hazel for rashes and poison ivy. I remember her being so excited to find blue flag.” She spoke in even, measured tones, as though she were informing herself, not just him. “She made a poultice from it. For sores and bruises. That must be how I gave her a false identity as a botanist...I never had parents in the future.”

  He watched the graceful way she moved, even as confusion and turmoil gripped her. Lively intelligence and spirit glittered in her eyes. She was determined to sort this out.

  She shook her head, stopped pacing, and cupped her upper arms as if from a chill. “This afternoon, Oliver—a porter at the hotel—brought me a bookcase I asked him to make. With it, his wife sent a vase filled with purple asters. When I saw them, my memory was triggered. They bloom in late autumn. My mother...my birth mother used to say they were God’s little smile on us before the winter. She loved seeing them at a time when other plants were beginning to die.”

  She rubbed the back of her neck with one hand and shook her head, but kept moving. “The memories came back and stayed and linked together and I couldn’t wait to tell you. I was so excited about capturing them. I failed to take that next step, to figure out what they meant. Before, they’d always been just wisps of visions or threads of recollection that teased me but couldn’t be trapped. Now they’re staying and I’m having to face them.” She stopped moving and whimpered. “I’m so confused. How could I have lived in the past and in the future?”

  Hurrying off the log, he pulled her into an embrace. He felt her pulse quicken. Memories of loving her under the moon’s beams flooded his senses. Holding her felt so right.

  After a moment she looked up at him, still wrapped in his arms. He saw his surprise at this unexpected moment briefly reflected on her face.

  He reached up to touch his palm on her cheek, and she tilted her head into his hand and fixed her gaze on his lips. His heart raced.

  Clearly he hadn’t thought this through before he’d hugged her. The energy between them had a distinctly magnetizing edge to it and delightful sensations cascaded through him. He longed to explore her mouth and those curves he remembered so well.

  No! You’ll scare her. She doesn’t remember us. Try to refocus.

  He fought against the moment, and dropped his hand. “Don’t try to remember,” he said softly. “Don’t force it. Just tell me what you do recall.”

  She blinked, took a breath, and stepped back quickly, stumbling. She would have fallen but he caught her arm and steadied her. She mumbled a breathless thank you and took another step away. “I...I remember meeting you the first time. I was nine and you were already fifteen. You were so tall.”

  “You teased me about that.”

  “Because I had a crush on you. But, you weren’t interested in a child. You only had eyes for Anabelle Fisher. A year or so later we heard you two had an understanding. Figured you’d shortly be betrothed. Ah, listen to me.” She jolted her hands to the sides of her face. “Betrothed. In the future we say engaged. Regardless, you two were planning to get married and it broke my heart.” She chuckled, but it sounded forced. “So did you? Marry her, I mean?”

  Startled, Brogan opened his mouth, but words wouldn’t come. She didn’t remember his engagement ended when he came looking for her. Or that the Indians kidnapped her. She remembered no deaths, no Mohawks, no interaction with him after age nine. No feelings for him.

  She didn’t remember them or their marriage.

  “My last memory of childhood is incomplete,” she continued, unconcerned about the question she’d posed to him and oblivious to the timing of the events in their pasts. She began pacing again. “I had been at Naomi Bennet’s. I must have been about eleven years old. I’d taken a bag of chestnuts there, on Sage. Remember that smart, old mare? As I got close to home I smelled a fire before I even saw our cabin. It was such a strong odor I thought my daddy was burning stumps again and that it got out of control. And poof! There, the memory stops. On top of that, certain memories that I had in the future, I see now they’re wrong...or incomplete...”

  Brogan wanted to ease her anxiety. “You said you had an aunt Isabel, right? She was real. You remember her.”

  Confusion tightened her brows. “Yes, but she died when I was sixteen. I remember being placed in foster care at that age. Then, shipped directly off to college.” She stopped, dropped back onto the log, and rubbed her temples. “But that can’t be right either...if my parents weren’t who I thought, then how could I have an aunt in the 2000s?” She gazed up at him. “Five years of my life are blank. I don’t know if I belong to the past or the future.”

  Brogan walked to the log, sat beside her, but said nothing. He wanted to touch her again, but didn’t. A breeze swept through, negligible in its strength but enough to send a couple leaves summersaulting over his feet.

  “You know what happened to me, don’t you?” Her voice was a whisper.

  He cringed. “Somewhat.”

  “Tell me. Please.”

  He took a deep breath. Released it. “I can’t. I learned that from the woman who helped me. She inadvertently would make a reference to my past or drop a tidbit of information that came before, and it would turn something puzzling into an obsession. It slowed my progress. I got confused by what was real and what had been suggested to me.” His voice was steady, betraying none of what he longed to say.

  She closed her eyes as she took a deep breath, then reached out to squeeze his hand where it rested on his thigh. “I understand.” She returned her hand to her lap. “It has to mean I’ve taken the water twice. But why then, this second time, when I came to 1926, was I so frightened of climbing into the water? The whole idea sounded mysterious—and crazy. I had never even heard about mineral water before...well, I’d heard of people using mineral springs a long time ago for gout and rheumatism and such, but I never gave it much credibility. Yet, it turns out I’ve taken it not once, but twice. What can’t I remember? What prompted my first time in the water? And how did I know to try it?” She waved a brushing-off hand. “Never mind. It’s—”

  A sound of rustling and crackling came from off to the right. Weight applied to dry leaves. Familiar, because they’d just done the same moments before. He touched a staying hand on her arm and put a finger to his lips. They froze and looked into the darkness, but saw nothing.

  Brogan slowly reached under his coat and pulled out a pistol. “Stay here,” he whispered, and hurried toward the source of the noise. He heard a steady strumming, almost like the cadence of a gallop, but it was in the distance. After progressing several more yards, he caught sight of an opossum scurrying under the brush.

  “An opossum!” he yelled. He returned to Libby. “Blasted creatures. I ought to shoot that thing. That’s the second time it startled me.”

  Libby bit back a laugh and Brogan recognized it as a release of tension. “Maybe he’s my stalker,” she quipped, but in it, he heard an edginess in her voice.

  “If you feel threatened, I can—”

  “What? Follow me everywhere? No, I’m careful. I keep my pistol handy when I’m not with you. Besides, I’m used to it again.”

  “Again?”

  “During the timeframe I can remember...from about age sixteen on, until I took the water with Andrew’s help, I thought that feeling of someone watching me was normal. But, I had nothing to compare it with. Then, after I took the water and came to this timeframe, the feeling went away. Again, I rationalized. Thought it was part of the healin
g process. I didn’t experience the feeling of being watched again until after moving into the hotel.”

  A pause fell. He didn’t want to say the wrong thing.

  “Brogan,” she said in a tone that told him she had a different topic on her mind again. “This right here, this ground, this chimney, this...is where I lived, isn’t it?”

  He hesitated, but could not lie to her. “It was. The Macay place.”

  She wrinkled her brow. “How did I become a Shaw?”

  He shrugged. “Must be locked in your memory.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “In Scotland, the Shaws were part of Clan Macay. So were the the Adamsons, Essons, Shays. Others as well. Your father and mother came here in 1741, two years before you were born. Things were bad for Highlanders in those days. The Jacobites wanted the return of the Stuart kings to the throne. Neil, your father, was convinced a final battle was coming between the Brits and Scots. Most of the Highlanders wanted to fight the Brits, but the Macay Clan disagreed. That didn’t sit well with your father, so they left Scotland. He was right. An uprising did occur. In 1745 Jacobite forces were slaughtered at the battle of Culloden.”

  “Was my father a blacksmith in Scotland before he left?”

  He nodded. “Yes, but he often talked of farming, rather than toiling over hot coals every day. He saved his money. Kept trading and bargaining for parcels of land until he was able to secure a huge tract of land from a drunk Brit in Baltimore.”

  Libby blanched. “Secure? You mean swindle, don’t you? My father was a swindler?”

  “Your father was a good man. His goal was to outsmart the Brits and their tyranny.”

  She heaved a sigh, remained quiet.

  He was afraid she would suggest they call it a night, so he asked about the topic hovering foremost on his mind, but what he least wanted to hear. “Tell me about Andrew. What sort of man is he?”

  She shrugged. “Intelligent. Old-fashioned, but works with modern technology. Likes to read. Enjoys music.” Her tone sounded matter-of-fact and that surprised, but pleased, him. She continued. “He’s dark-complected, not real tall, and his eyebrows do this weird little flick up and down when he hears something he doesn’t like. And oh...” She clicked two fingers. “...he has a bad knee which he hates to acknowledge, but it’s quite obvious because there’s a scar there.”

  A scar. He didn’t want to feed her a memory, but he couldn’t stop himself. Perhaps it would help her recall. “You have a scar.” He touched his upper chest. “In this area. Depending on what you wear, it shows at times.”

  She touched the spot. “It’s from a bad time in my life, when I was with Aunt Isabel in Africa and we...” She paled, pulled her brows together, and looked down. “But that can’t be,” she whispered. “It couldn’t have been Africa...it must have happened here...” She rubbed the sides of her face. “Do you mind if we leave? I’m not feeling very well.”

  Yes, he minded! “Of course not.”

  They extinguished the torches and headed to their motorcars. Brogan holding the lantern in one hand and Libby’s hand in the other. As they neared the vehicles, Libby uttered a nonsensical sound as though startled. “Wait, what is that?” she asked, pointing at the ground.

  He moved the lantern to see a piece of cloth. Lifting it carefully by one corner, he held it closer to the light. It was faded white with cross-stitched flowers around the edge, and finished in lace.

  “A woman’s handkerchief,” Libby said.

  Brogan’s mouth went dry. “Gretchen’s.”

  Libby gasped. “How do you know?”

  “I recognize it, her initials in one corner.”

  “How did she know to come here?”

  His gaze moved from the handkerchief to her. “I bought the land several years ago. Gretchen knows I come here to be alone. To think. To build.” He lowered the lantern closer to the ground and saw hoof prints. “She must have ridden here on old Bess.”

  “Brogan, I’m so sorry. She must have listened to our conversation. But, we weren’t saying anything very personal. It was mostly about my memories and being ill and taking the water—”

  “The water.” Dread snaked through him.

  “I don’t understand.”

  “She’s been ill. Terrible pain. Several times she has said death would be better. She wanted to get away from demons. What if she...”

  Libby grabbed his forearm. “You think she left here and went to the mineral spring? We have to stop her. She’ll drown. It’s the wrong time of year.”

  As he spoke, he hurried toward his motorcar. “What are you talking about? You can take the water any time. I’ve got to go stop her if that’s what she’s thinking.”

  Libby raced to her car, yelling as she moved. “I’ll follow you. Don’t worry, she’s on horseback so we can get there faster.”

  As Brogan climbed in the car, he rejected what Libby said. Given the switchbacks in the hill trails and the condition of the roads, a horse could easily get to the spring faster than a motorcar.

  And, Gretchen already had a lengthy head start.

  Brogan raced the patrol motorcar across the jarring terrain, pulling as close as possible to the Crystal Spring. For most of the trip the roads had been little more than rutted dirt paths that switched back and forth to make it easier for drivers to maneuver around steep hills and mountain slopes. Easier, but slower.

  As he slammed the motorcar to a stop he realized he’d forgotten to pray for Gretchen. He’d spent the trip continually calculating and recalculating in his head how long the trek would take him on foot, all the time ready to abandon his ride if he determined foot travel was faster.

  He grabbed a flashlight—no time to fiddle with a lantern—and ran, calling Gretchen’s name. Several yards from his destination he saw a large silhouette of black in his peripheral vision and shone the light toward it. Old Bess! Gretchen had to be here. He bolted to the spring where his light illuminated something horizontal in the water. Moving closer, he discovered her lying on her back, eyes closed, body fully submerged. For the briefest moment he thought she might still be alive and transforming. The next second, however, sent a cognition through his brain and a horror through his core.

  He climbed into the spring and dropped to his knees, the water rising to his waist. With gentle movements he lifted her and carried her away from the spring. The water reacted with a whooshing sound as it filled the void he created. He placed her on the ground and checked for a pulse. Nothing.

  Gretchen was dead.

  Grief swelled hard against his ribs and rose into his throat, bitter-tasting. A tear trailed down his face for the loss of this beautiful life, this young woman he had called his wife. That tear was followed by one more, this one prompted by a mixture of guilt and remorse for the life they had miserably shared together. He had married her to save her from unhappiness and tragedy and certain early death. In the end, that’s exactly what he had delivered because he had married her. Would she have gotten ill if she hadn’t been with him? Probably. Or pregnant? Most likely, given the path she was on. But, he was supposed to protect her, and if it hadn’t been for him, she would not have hurried here in such a frenzy and been so reckless.

  He heard footsteps behind him. He hadn’t heard a motorcar or noticed lights, but he intuited from the lightness of the steps it was Libby. A moment later, he heard a gasp and a small whimper.

  She touched his shoulder. “Is she...” Then, “I’m so sorry.”

  He heard grief, distress, anguish in those three words. Or, was that all he could feel at the moment?

  “She didn’t understand the water,” he said hoarsely. “Didn’t take it correctly.”

  He heard Libby exhale a weary breath, chest deep. He assumed it was a sign of resignation, but when he saw her reach for the flashlight where he’d dropped it on the ground and watched her move to the other side of Gretchen’s body, he realized it had been a sign of determination and valuation as well.

  She sca
nned the light around Gretchen’s body. “No ground disturbed. No other footprints. No signs of a scuffle. No reason to believe anyone else was involved. The horse seems calm. She wasn’t thrown off. Didn’t stumble. It looks like she entered the water willingly.”

  As the husband in Brogan agonized, the sheriff in him tried to listen. This assessment of the circumstances surrounding a death was vital. He trusted what Libby said. The Indians’ ability to assess a trail and navigate the forests was legendary, and real. Together, he and Morning Meadow had learned to pick up a trail from a slight indentation here, a broken twig there. They could distinguish between the paw print of a wolf and a dog. A twig gnawed by an animal and one broken by a man. Morning Meadow was with him at that moment and she didn’t even know it.

  Libby dropped to her knees on Gretchen’s other side, and inched the light from the dead woman’s feet to her head. When the light illuminated her face, Libby heaved another sound of shock. “Anabelle Fisher! Is it...but you said her name was—”

  “Gretchen. Anabelle’s descendant.”

  In the dim residual illumination cast by the flashlight, Libby studied him expectantly for several moments. She was waiting for more, he was sure, but he couldn’t offer anything.

  She nodded a couple times and restored her resolve, moving the light again and, this time, hovering it at the side of Gretchen’s face. “These rocks...terribly rough and jagged. If she was distraught and frantic, she might have fallen and hit her head as she went in.” She leaned in closer, toward the light. “But, there’s no blood. Not even redness.” She lifted her gaze to his. “You said she was ill. It looks like she willingly stepped in...drowned in a few feet of water...”

  Brogan smoothed a hand down his cheek and across his lips. Shook his head in disbelief, attempting to shift his brain into sheriff mode. He reached under Gretchen to pick her up.

  “Wait!”

  Brogan sat back, startled.

  “Don’t move the body until I take pictures and call—” Libby broke off, shaking her head. “Sorry, I’m thinking of the future...”