Aurora Moonrise

A cloud passes in front of the moon. A shadow rears up behind Aurora. She lashes out, a fist thrown with weight behind it.

She impacts hard against tree bark. There’s nothing there. Jumping at literal shadows.

Aurora sighs, and advances deeper into the spirit‍-​haunted woods.

Running through this domain, one can’t say Sus made no attempt to trip her. Sus is these woods, and the roots beneath her feet had every intention of pulling her to the ground; the vines and branches clearly intended to slap out in front of her stride, and the only paths allowed to be worn in the underbrush were those that twisted like a maze. But having spent over ten years wandering these woods, she can weave through at a jogging pace.

On and on she went through the dark of night. Far enough to be alone for a bit, to feel peace and solitude, to cool off from how hot she’d gotten. (Some would be afraid in these woods; of wolves and gemfiends and wild spirits; but Aurora had easily wrestled dogs and foxes, and she had the measure of Sus; she didn’t trust them, but she trusted her safety in their woods.)

When she finally slowed to a stop, it is not out of caution. No, it’s still so hot. Sweat slicks her face like she’s melting. She keeps moving, but it only gets worse.

(The shadows look like visual snow.)

Aurora knows the feel of Sus’s woods, familiarity to the point of instinct.

So she knows something is different. It’s off, it’s wrong.

The paths are too straight, the trees too tall. Are those cypresses? Not willows or oaks. If she was being watched earlier, now she felt ten more eyes on her. The shadows are sharp. Were those bones?

The moonlight‍ ‍—‍ the moon is brilliantly full‍ ‍—‍ filters down between the branches. Sometimes she blinks and the needles are gone, the boughs bare and every too‍-​tall tree now skeletal and spirit‍-​haunted.

“Sus?” She’s not sure if she speaks the words as a reproach, an invocation, or a quiet cry for help. There’s no response of any sort. The wind blows locks of too‍-​colorful hair in front of her face. Her long‍-​sleeved coat is fluttering around her. It’s a strong storm’s wind, and it chills her. She doesn’t shiver.

Aurora isn’t running anymore. Cautious steps forward, head swiveling and double checking every shadow around her. Those shadows shift when she steps near a tree’s shade; they disappear when she gets near.

“Who are you?” Aurora speaks, steadying her voice.

There’s a presence, sometimes felt in the twisting of a cypress’s sharp leaves. Sometimes echoed in a fallen twig. Always distant, fragmentary indications, like a moon viewed from glinting dewdrops. A spirit. So close, so far away.

Aurora grits her teeth. “Come out! I’m not afraid of you!”

Her head is still swiveling around, gaze impatient for motion, true motion. The wind is knocking rocks and sticks around and making the tree limbs groan‍ ‍—‍ it meant there’s so many distractions to look past. But if she saw something—

There! A hundred feet away! Eyeshine behind a dead tree leaning against its fellows. The body is long behind it, like it moved on four legs. But a glimpse is all she gets.

There’s a tremble in her legs. She would run, but she wasn’t afraid. This spirit would show itself, and Aurora was going to punch it for scaring her like that.

A tree moves. The eyeshine is piercing light out from two holes in its bark. Above, two boughs split and split again, a crown of dead fingers. After glimpsing for a second, Aurora breaks eye contact (there is a mind behind those eyes, she knows this in her bones). It’s still there, she can feel it watching her.

Yet it seems wise to drink no more than a moment’s glimpse of that sight.

Aurora’s eyes stare at the ground. She crouches to pick up a rock. And then, eyes closed, hurls the rock to where she feels those eyes watching her.

Wood cracks as if under strain from snow. Is that the sound of her hitting the mark, or the spirit making sparse? The skin‍-​prickling stare is gone now.

Aurora roots herself to the spot. She’s not afraid.

“Aurora?” The girl suddenly remembers the sound of her father’s voice. “Aurora! Please come back here!”

She runs. Not now, not when he wouldn’t tell her anything. She wouldn’t go back yet.

Under the cold light of a full moon, Aurora never finds refugee of shadows to hide. The storm wind seems to blow boughs out of place as soon as she steps under them. The way even dark overhangs grew illuminated leaves her wondering if, somehow, the wind is blowing the moonlight itself.

More than Aurora is running, tonight. She sees mice darting, foxes ignoring them to crawl into burrows, owls nestled still in the hollows of trees.

Aurora still feels hot, a coal in a smith’s forge, burning with the heat that fueled action, the sort of action Father has rules against. It’s that heat which keeps her from feeling cold‍ ‍—‍ her breath is a cloud leaving her mouth, and she swears there’s gleaming flakes of frost in the night air.

But all of the animals stowing themselves away‍ ‍—‍ did they feel like winter had come early?

The eyes appear anew, fifty feet to her left, then forty feet to her right. Aurora dropped the pretense; when her path would take her near those glowing, hollow sockets, she ran the other way. As they watch her, she sees it more and more fully. It wasn’t a tree with two boughs‍ ‍—‍ those were antlers upon its head.

It felt safer to glimpse the body. She had seen hunters kill doe. She had seen wolves kill a buck and happened across the carcass. She remembered it now. Skin still covers these bones, but barely. The deer is thin and taut, like it had grown larger than a man without ever eating.

(Was it hungry? Would she be its first meal?)

They were so long‍ ‍—‍ deer didn’t have eight legs. Deer didn’t have pair after pair of antlers upon their back like wings of velvet and bone. Deer were prey, they didn’t chase.

The wind blows again, and above her she see clouds rolling in so fast a fisherman of the sky must have reeled them. Now the moon is occluded from the ground by clouds colored like the fringe of a rainbow.

So why did the shadows still light up when she steps near?

The deer spirit manifests, twenty feet away right in front of her, closer than it ever has come before, like a shadow given flesh. This near, the hide appears a shade of deep blue.

Aurora gasps, terror choking her breath. (What color was strangled flesh?) She falls to the ground, coughing. Trembling, she makes to stand, falls again. But she has to get up.

How long has she been running? Twilight had long given way to true night. Aurora is tired. She can’t keep this up.

Trapped in the domain of a malevolent spirit, unable to move. Would she melt from the heat still building inside her? Freeze with the unnatural cold of this storm? Or would the winged deer devour?

Get up, child.

Aurora mumbles. It’s not words.

Run. Escape. Give me a hunt.

The shadows seemed enchanted with the words.

Aurora rasps a breath, and scrambled to her feet. The shining, hollow eyes are peering at her, deep and evaluating. Eight legs crush dead cypress leaves underhoove. The spirit circles her. She has to time to stand shakily, then get steady.

Go. The deer’s mouth yawns upon and there’s something within and Aurora starts running anew.

The hunt is different, now. Those eyes are behind her always, and never leave. Earlier, the trees sometimes flickered, looking leafless and dead. She can’t banish the images no matter how many times she blinks. She can feel its falsity, a ghostly illusion.

A fox sleeping in a low tree branch looks like a crow‍-​picked skeleton. But it’s not.

Aurora had delved too deep into this spirit’s domain. In each tree, it was no longer a distant presence; every plant here sung with the slow, faint pulse of a spirit’s enchantment, a will‍-​song.

Sweat soaked her underclothes. Did she smell terrified? Even as her fear deepened, she feels ever hotter.

She is being led, that much i obvious. Earlier, brief appearances of the spirit had nudged her this way and that, and now she must be getting close. The deer‍-​thing pushes her exactly where the spirit wants her. Each long, cantering stride of those eight legs brought that stare closer and closer.

Just up ahead, there’s a gap. The trees break into a sudden clearing.

But Aurora trips again. Her balance tips forward, and her hands catch her. She doesn’t want to stop moving, she can’t fall again, so they push off the ground even as her legs keep moving. For that moment on all fours, she truly feels like prey animal fleeing in mortal terror.

A leap brings her out of the forest. Before her now lies the banks of a pond so round cartographers would draw it with a compass. The banks rise up toward the edge.

Aurora strides twice near the pond’s edge before leaping again. She was so hot. All she could think, seeing those cool waters, was how they’d feel washing over her skin.

Sailing over the waters, she looks down, and understands.

Why the shadows kept shifting, why the forest was illuminated, why the deer’s gaze looked so much like eyeshine and she was afraid to look too deeply.

Aurora is light. Her skin glows; her hair sparkles; her eyes radiate.

She really was like a coal in a forge, so hot she burned bright.

Time to be doused. Her arc reaches a peak, and now she falls toward the clear waters. The pond had no fish or scum, and even the bottom looked smooth instead of muddy

She should have splashed. But Aurora sinks into the waters like sand, and it’s not a ripple or wave that flows out. It’s a crackling sound: the waters freeze to ice around her, ice glowing with her light.

Frost coats her skin when she emerges from the depths, and the freezing happens so fast that, when lifting an arm out of the ice, it goes from covered in frost at the wrist to chunk of ice at the elbow, and when her shoulder emerges, it’s near‍-​immobilized by the mass of the iced pond. She struggles to dunk it back in.

The deer trots forward. At the the pond’s edge, the long, gaunt neck bends toward the thin rime of ice (the pond is freezing slower, farther from her). A long tongue breaks the ice and sips at they water. The eyes stare at her still, shining back with her own light.

“A most pleasant hunt, child Aurora. I confess I cannot swim; patience will seal your freedom.” The voice is not human. If a wretched old crone sounded tender and matronly; if a deep lullaby were sung by a wailing banshee; if you could hear the winter winds make threats and promises, it would sound like this.

It’s then that everything snaps and falls apart in Aurora. She laughs, high‍-​pitched and rhythmless. If this was her last laugh, it would be terribly embarrassing.

She says, “That doesn’t make sense! Deer are prey, not predators.”

The deer neither laughs nor growls at this critique of its chosen form and art. “To my precious leaves, deer are the most relentless hunter,” says the spirit.

She, the spirit, dips her head deeper into the cold pond water. Tear tracks flow down from the hollow eyes, and glowing ice crawls upward. The ice continues, tracing out the whole of the deer spirit’s form in all its austere emaciation. It is both illuminated and defined. Somehow, hanging off this spirit like an indecent raiment, the glow doesn’t feel like her own light anymore.

When the head lifts, the spirit hasn’t closed the mouth.

Aurora wasn’t sure if pigs had sharp teeth, but she was certain deer didn’t.

“Are you going to eat me?”

“I would not dare subsume you. I lack that power.”

Aurora frowned (or tried to, cracking the ice on her face). “You seemed to have plenty of power in that hunt.”

“Truly, it is a borrowed might. You feel it too, do you not? Burning in your breast, setting your teeth on edge, the omens of a great and terrible storm to come. I would not be awake in month, in this season, not without it, and at this hour you, dear, would be asleep.”

“Oh,” Aurora says. She looks up at the clouds. Was it just the weather, all along? But that couldn’t be it, she had reasons to feel how she did. “No, I was frustrated. I was mad, and that’s why I ran out here.”

“Two things can dance together as one truth.” And then the deer sits, dropping to look down on her from a lower height, eight legs tucking underneath. “Tell me, what insult inspired your journey?”

“You’d know the pig spirit, right? Sus, your neighbor?”

“I see,” the spirit says, as if that alone had explained everything.

She continues explaining anyway. “They, they said that everyone hates me. And,”‍ ‍—‍ if Aurora hesitated her, it’s the frost on her lips, she doesn’t stutter‍ ‍—‍ “They’re right. I tried to prove them wrong and I didn’t.”

“What you must understand,” she starts, “is that Sus is a spirit from the court of wild autumn. It is their nature to delight in the decay and ruination of all things. The truth is not that you are despised, but merely that Sus is jealous of your position. I have watched your father hold you close when winter’s chill grips the land. He cares for you greatly, and Sus would simply prefer that attention be theirs, or no one’s at all. Everything else is a lie traced between points of truth.”

“But Sunny? She’s sick of me, isn’t she?”

“If Sunny feels any ill will towards you, it is regret, or bitterness, or perhaps a different species of jealousy. Long ago, Sunny dreamed of your fathers hand in marriage, but that was never to be.” The deer is looking up, like she could read it in the stars, but you cannot see the stars behind violet clouds. “I would not be surprised to learn she looks upon you, on some occasions, and dreams a fantasy where you had been her daughter instead.”

“But Father, I mean, Geller‍ ‍—‍ is he really my father?” She only gets a stare from the spirit, and eventually is granted a languid nod, as if disappointed in the question. “What about Mother? Did you ever know her?”

The deer looks around them, eyes wandering around the pond. “How could I ever forget her?”

“Was she a powerful enchanter?”

There’s a strangled sound, like a deer drowning, like ice cracking. Aurora frowns, slowly realizing it was a brief laugh. Another might find it offputting, but spirits’ strangeness never bothered Aurora.

She’s worried the thing was laughing at her mother, though.

As if sensing her offense, the spirit finally says, “One of the greatest, some would say.”

Aurora cracks (literally) into a grin. It lasts until she wonders, “Then why doesn’t my father just say that?”

“Do you feel your mother’s absence? Wish that, at night, you had someone else to hold you? A woman to be proud of you, to guide you?”

“I wish for it every night.”

“But you never knew her. At best, you’ve heard what mothers are supposed to be like. Now imagine you had. Would her absence not pain you doubly so? Could you stop yourself from dwelling on that loss at every moment?”

“I don’t know.”

“I can look into your heart and see it clearly. You’d run away from it. Running away… it comes as naturally to you as autumn turns to winter. It’s what brought you to me, after all.” Another strangled, cracking sound. “Your father isn’t much different. He thinks he can escape the pain of losing your mother by not thinking about it. It leaves him ill equipped to discuss those matters with you.”

Now Aurora stares up as if she could see the stars. She’s frowning. She’s not a coward, is she? But… it makes sense. It explained this in a way nobody seems able to explain why people do this.

Aurora sighs. “I think I understand now. Thank you.” She watches, and the spirit doesn’t make any indication of appreciation. Aurora frowns. She ignores it. “You know, I’m not sure if I’ve seen you before, miss spirit.”

“Of course not. I belong in the dead, dark nights of the coldest months. But this weather, it is invigorating. The ice nascent in those clouds, it sings to me. This storm… it will be spectacular.”

“Well, I’m glad you’re here to see it.”

Strangled, cracking, and the sound goes on for so long. “Oh, do not be glad. Do you imagine me compassionate? This is incorrect. I am merely truthful. I am a spirit of the court of wild winter. Do you know what winter means to mortals caught in a blizzard with nowhere to go? I am death. If you imagine me compassionate, then imagine my condolences.”

“For what?”

But the spirit was gone, like a shadow in the passing of a light.

Aurora stares into nothing for a while, dreaming of her mother, of a future that would make her proud. It may have been mere moments. There’s a flash, coming lightning a rumbling forethought in the heavens. The winds grow still. Very still.

Flakes of snow descend from on high. It’s cold, but the chill that grips her is pure fear. The words echo with all musicality of a choking, frozen deer.

It was so very cold. What does winter mean to mortals caught in a blizzard?