The Moon Spun Round by Elenor Gill Read Free Book Online Page B

throws out is useless beyond a few feet. This is a white beam, asearchlight, a spotlight, something theatrical that penetrates the curtain and illuminates her bed like a stage set.
    The clock reads five. She slides from the covers and moves cautiously to the window. The curtains are thin muslin and barely conceal what’s on one side of the glass from the other. Though why so cautious? Is it Sally who needs to be hidden or something out there? She pulls the drape to one side, an inch, a handbreadth. And there it is, directly outside her room, poised above the horizon.
    The moon.
    And such a moon. A moon she has never seen before.
    Oh, she’s always known it was there, had caught glimpses of it from time to time. ‘See the moon, my love,’ her father would say, carrying her perilously on his shoulder and pointing at the bottle-top disc suspended between the smoke and the rooftops. And there was always proof of it in the nursery books. Hey diddle-diddle, the cat and the fiddle. A crescent of white in a night-sky puddle set against the printed page. And there had been other moons when she was old enough to explore the night. Small moons, tossed high above the cityscape, made pale by the flare of neon and sodium and the glare of oncoming traffic. Timorous moons, always coming or going but never the same. Moons that rhymed with June but had little to do with the flowering of first love. But beneath the gaze of this awesome presence there would be no innocent fumble in the back of anyone’s car. No cow would dare to jump over this luminary.
    No, she has never seen a moon such as this. A Titan moon, magnified by the curving of the Earth, its nearness beyond the comfort of knowledge or belief. It hangs—no, it doesn’t hang, or float or glide—it has established its position above the trees, taking command of the night sky and the land below. Its roundness is near perfection; creamy gold like an antique pearl, its surface scoured and pitted by the ravages of space. It seems to shed no light from overhead—the sky is the colour of mussel shells, or at best an indigo mist—yet the fields and hedgerows glow with a phosphorescent whiteness, a light that bestows only kindness on what it touches. The banished darkness coalesces in even blacker shadows, throwing furrows into sharp relief, detailing each stone, each stubble blade.
    This is an ancient moon. It once watched over the men who struck axes from rocks of flint, men who huddled in rough shelters, cowering from the prowlers of the night. This moon remembers the pathways once trodden by long-toothed tigers as they crossed this very land. Now it faces Sally’s window, as if it has singled her out for some purpose and knows she has answered its summons. Its power draws her, flows through her, a magnetic tide, subtle yet palpable,the subliminal hum of a primeval generator. If she were to listen hard enough, long enough, it may have something to tell.
    A movement catches the corner of her eye, snapping her out of the spell. Something stirs over to one side of her garden, a slight shifting of shadows. From the patch of trees between the neighbouring properties a small shape emerges and slinks across the lawn, black against black. Relief: it’s only Cat returning, that’s all, and Sally won’t be alone. But then another shape, this one larger and of human form, also emerges from the trees and follows Cat. They cross the grass, clearing the shadows, and move into the full glare of moonlight. The figure is so clear that Sally can see that, despite the trousers and the bulky jacket, it’s a woman. True, it’s tall and angular enough to be a man, yet it moves with such grace and lightness that there can be no mistake. As the figure turns her head, a cascade of dark hair flows around her shoulders.
    The woman pauses for a moment, as if she senses she is being watched. She looks up, directly at the window, and Sally fears their eyes will meet and she will be discovered in the act of