the Prologue
I was seventeen (almost) in the summer of 1994 when they came for me. I don’t mean that in a threatening, monstrous way More romantic, but not romantic like you see in Hallmark cards and homecoming dance. Not as straightforward a love story as that, though I certainly learned a thing or two about passion, and the light taste of Iluna’s kiss will never leave my lips. I mean romantic in an breathtaking, transcendent way. Something spiritual. Something real. Romantic like the great old adventures, stories so grand and fantastic that your heart pounds and your blood races and calling it romantic feels right.
Romantic like a warm summer evening in that magic hour between day and night we call dusk. The fireflies are out, and you walk out onto the porch, and breathe in the air, so fresh and clean without the dwindling sun. Then you look up, and the silver moon, that awesome glowing giant, has risen, and you’re speechless. You can’t say a word. But that’s okay because you don’t have to. There’s nothing that needs to be said and no words that can describe it.
That kind of romance.
When I say “moon maidens” came for me, what do you think of? Do you think of witches? Druids, perhaps? Fair Celtic beauties in sheer white dresses, thin, or nothing at all?
Closer. The same solar system anyway, if not the right planet.
It’s still there, of course, that glistening jewel in the sky, some nights waxing, some waning, some new. And sometimes it’s full. When it’s full, so am I. My heart rises, and my breath quickens. It’s as if I’m under a spell. I’m a werewolf in love. A few nights a month, I walk on stardust, eyes aglow, and I hear faint echoes of their heavenly hums when I look up, past the stars, into Heaven and the silver round face of God.
So, I look forward to moonrise.
And when I see it, I remember. I remember every vivid detail of The Magic Summer. I remember the joy, the wonder, the awe. I remember the sweet and the sour, the hot days and endless nights. I remember the sweat, the laughs, the tears, the fear and trembling, passion and desire. I remember remembering.
Most of all, I remember them. Those strange, beautiful moon maidens, and how in all the realms of Heaven and Earth, they came down to the little town of Still Bayou, Texas, and of all the souls in the cosmos, they had touched mine. Whenever I’m feeling down, or low, or as though I don’t matter, I remember they had chosen me. Sensual, bewitching Iluna; flighty, ethereal Eriu; and motherly, glorious Cassiopeia.
Iluna. Eriu. Cassiopeia. Those are the names I know for joy, wonder, hope.
And when I remember them, my heart leaps and my soul quakes. To remember something so sweet and magical, something out of a fairy tale but oh so real. All the beauty comes back to me, all the joy, and once again I’m light as air. Once again, I touch the surface of the moon.
And then I weep.
… Full book available February 2022 …
the Epilogue
I know this is all a lot to take in, and even more to believe. Maybe if you’re a stickler for flat facts, you’ll tell me the lunar patterns don’t match up. That I said it was full when it should have been waning or waxing when the sky was new. But then you could hire men to stand outside your chimney or send skeptics to the Moon and they wouldn’t find Santa Claus or the maidens. That doesn’t mean they’re not there. Maybe you must look from the right angle. The fact is, I told it as I remember it in my heart. When it comes to tales, especially of the tall variety, that’s about as true as it gets.
A bedtime story needs no physical evidence, surely. Yet there was one unlikely artifact from that immortal summer I keep with me even now, and the years in my desk drawer have not dimmed its color or its meaning, more profound than you might expect from such source material.
Yes, I kept the Marvel Swimsuit Special. I’m far past drooling over drawings of superheroines (or so I tell myself), but I keep it for Billy, for nostalgia, and for the way The Watcher sums it all up.
He looks at the superheroes, observing their story, which makes him a part of it. He compares their lives, all lives, to spirals, expanding in a circle, like ripples in the water, interacting with each other and changing as a result. And those changes are as lovely as they are necessary.
Surprising the wisdom you can find even when you’re not looking. I certainly didn’t open that comic with noble intentions, but the Watcher’s epitaph struck me as moving and deep.
Maybe it’s like that with a lot of things. The Magic Summer, for example. If you can find a bit of insight even in so immature a pursuit as ogling comic book characters, you can get a lot more from a lot else.
And I heed the Watcher’s message. As long as I’ve lived, as far as I can see, that’s about the way it goes. So many spirals, so many lives, overlapping eventually, and it’s beautiful when they do. I splashed in a few circles that summer, of the mundane and miraculous, and I do believe we’re still intersecting. Maybe we always are, and maybe we always will be. All those notes of that grand old song.
So that’s my story.
But it’s not my moon. The moon belongs to everyone. That’s perhaps the most wonderful thing about it. Sometimes work is too long and strangers are cold. Sometimes it seems like the whole world is too loud and tired, and that people have forgotten the stories. It’s a sad thought, but even then, I take joy that anytime, cloudy or clear, new or full, I can look and know they’re up there, the glow of their beauty and the memory of that summer undiminished by the years. I wonder if they’re looking back. And I hope, friends, that if the night is right, the moon is bright, and your heart is open, you’ll look and find a story of your own.