Selene Nightwhisper's Arc

Chapter 1 of 5

Selene stood on the ridge above the animal graveyard with the moon in her hands. She had held it since she was seven, when it drifted east and she reached up and dragged it back. Her mother had been ash by then, burned out of the sky by the sun. The moon was cold under her palms. It had been cold for eighteen years. She wanted the sun dead. She wanted a night that did not end. She could not begin, because her hands were full. Below her, small stones marked the graves of pets. Someone had left flowers. A patch of moonflowers glowed near the low vine-covered wall, opened toward her because she was the reason they opened at all. She stared at them and tried, again, to think of a way to smother the sun without letting go. She had tried before. She had tried pinning the moon against a cliff with her shoulder. It slid. She had tried wedging it into the fork of the grand oak. It rolled loose the moment she stepped back. The moon obeyed only her grip. Nothing else in the world could hold it up. "You're going to drop it eventually." The voice came from the wall. A girl sat on the stones with her bare feet swinging. Black eyes, white hair, a dress torn to ribbons at the hem. Selene had not heard her arrive because she made no sound. A ghost, then. Selene had seen a few. They usually kept their distance. "I won't drop it," Selene said. "Then you won't do anything else, either." The ghost tilted her head. "What do you want so badly that you'd need both hands?" Selene did not answer. The ghost watched her, patient, the way a cat watches. Then a second figure came up the slope through the moonflowers. Gray dress, white hair, bare feet, older. She walked like someone who had walked a long time. Selene knew the stories. The pale woman. The one who pulled things out of the dead world and did not always give them back. "I can hold it," the pale woman said. She stopped an arm's length away and looked at the moon, not at Selene. "For a while. Not forever. Long enough for one working." "Why?" "I need a name." The pale woman finally met her eyes. "You're the daughter of a goddess. You can find one. When I set it down, you take it back. That is the trade." Selene weighed it. The sun would rise in four hours. Her mother had died at a sunrise. She thought of her hands empty for the first time since she was a child, and what she could do with them. She lifted the moon down between them. The pale woman raised her arms. Selene let go. Her palms were cold and light and free. Above her, the moon held.