Luna
Ingrid Barnes

In the afternoon, Luna came to the garden, and found that it was good. It was just grass and a clump of scraggly pine trees out on the headland, but it was good. The garden was bordered by a pile of huge broken boulders that tumbled down onto the smooth sand of the beach. The sea was like a small child now. It patted the sand softly, creating small splashes, then cooing with pleasure. Luna smiled. It was good.

The first thing that she noticed was a climbing rose bush growing on one of the pines. How a rose bush got out here, Luna couldn’t imagine. The rose bush had not bothered with such thoughts about its existence or purpose, it had just gone ahead and engulfed the tree, covering it like ivy. It was now reaching out to the other trees, ready to consume them too. Long sprays of bedraggled pink flowers bobbed knowingly at Luna, sending wafts of perfume through the air.

A cool breeze was blowing, lifting Luna’s hair off her sweaty neck. There was a tinkling noise from the branches of the pines. She looked and found strings of jangling things woven through the branches, like the web of a strange spider. She examined them closer. Shells, coloured glass, beads, feathers and tiny pieces of broken mirror were knotted onto lengths of string and hung from the branches. They had become tangled with each other, hanging crookedly. She pulled at a bunch of feathers, tugging so that the string fell straight, and rubbed clean some mirrors that were encrusted with dust. She wondered vaguely about the person who had hung this here. A beachcomber, she imagined, collecting treasures from the beach, then hanging them up here on the headland. But why?

Luna made a small fire beside the pine tree clump. The dry branches she used burned easily and smelled of pine. The little fire was delighted with its own beauty. It burbled to her in a friendly, self-important way.

The afternoon drifted towards evening in a languid, extravagant way. The sun lazily spilled orange and purple across the sky, dipping a finger of colour into the sea and letting it spread over the glistening water. Luna found a small clump of white daisies and made a daisy crown for herself. She justified her childishness. What better to do? As the sun finished its performance and the night became cooler, Luna felt a twinge of discomfort. She thought she heard noises, felt strange breezes. But, ah, it was the fairies. Yes. This was just the place for fairies, it had that magical feel to it.

The perfectly imagined fairies, the busy crackle of the fire, and the tinkling of the strange tree hangings gave the evening a party atmosphere. Like the bonfire she and Annie had organised a few weeks ago, with Chinese lanterns and corn on the cob.

Luna curled up by the dwindling fire, her eyelids moving slower and slower as she listened to the sounds of the garden. The beads and mirrors still tinkled charmingly as wind lifted the branches gently. The sea had now grown old. The waves lapped gently on the sand, like the rhythmic creaking of the rocking chair. Luna could almost hear the clack of knitting needles. Almost, almost.

~ ~ ~


Luna rose softly up out of her body. She hovered in the night sky above the garden, looking down. Suddenly, she saw all, and understood. The sea was a huge creature, angry, monstrous. Jagged teeth of rock protruded from sandy lips. The garden, the garden, was its mouth. She was in the mouth.

Luna sank back into her body, feeling the ground hard and cold beneath her. She felt a pine needle fall onto her shoulder. She saw that the pine trees were bending over her, stretching their branches down to her and shaking, shaking. She didn’t understand. Then, the needles were falling like rain. Their sharp points pricked her skin. They were in her mouth, her ear, inside her clothes. They were covering her, smothering her, she was squashed, crushed beneath the needles. The hungry earth was sucking, sucking. Her warm red blood soaked into the hard earth, enriching it. I became dark and moist. She was rotting away, decomposing, and her flesh feeding the garden. The garden was hungry. She was consumed.

~ ~ ~


All was quiet and still. The sea sparkled softly. Luna brushed the pine needle off her shoulder.

Then there was wind. Beads and glass rattled and chattered viciously. Luna scrambled to her feet, pushing her hands into the fire. Cold ash crumbled onto her palms. As she stood, she was caught by a spray of roses. The thorns pulled at her hair. A spider web bound her eyes and mouth. Then she heard a small wail, like that of a child. Fighting free, she bolted across the wet grass and onto the beach. The sand was cold and damp.

Luna sat, tightly holding herself in, not breathing, just listening. Her heart beat fast, filling her throat and pounding in her ears. She was sure she was being watched, but by what, she wasn’t sure. She wanted to pin down her fear, like the insect collector pins the spider to the board. One swift stab, the cold metal piercing the fat, black body, and the object of terror is reduced to a specimen, safe and sanitary and under control. She looked over her shoulder. There was nothing there. But there must be something. An animal, maybe, or a person. A person. She stood and turned fully. If there was a person, she must find it. Him, or her, she corrected herself. But she must. She would speak again, speak and maybe laugh too. She wondered if her mouth still remembered how to speak. Anticpation bubbling in her mouth, Luna climbed the rocks and walked back into the garden.

As Luna stood in the grass, the sun tossed some watery, grey rays of light over her shoulder. The first light of dawn, but it was enough. Enough for her to see that there was no-one, nothing, in the garden. She was still alone. The pines bent softly inward, toward each other, whispering secrets, as if pointing out that they were not alone, not like her. Luna swallowed hard, trying to suck back that wail, that she now realised had been her own. Then she walked out of the garden and out along the sand. She seemed quite small as she walked away, a lone figure, but for her long wispy shadow. The beads clattered in the bitter breeze, the sound somehow harsher now.