The Soul Moon

It was nighttime, or it should have been. Out her tiny circular window she could see the Soul Moon, bathing the entire landscape in vibrant white light. Her socked feet hit the wooden floorboards beneath her bed, her fingertips itching.

Within moments she had shoved her feet into her shoes, tucked her notebook under her arm, and clutched a handful of pencils in her left fist. She moved silently through the house, slipped her backpack off its peg by the door, and teetered on the threshold between inside and outside.

She pushed the door open, and it gave a low creak. Then, she slung her bag over her shoulder and took off down the mountainside.

The tall grasses looked silver in the Soul Moon's light, the sky like a gaping black hole punctuated with a blinding orb. The air was warm but her hair still stood on end, conscious of the wind and every whisper of movement around her. Everywhere she looked she expected to see them, the ghosts. The souls. Today was the one day a year that the planes overlapped, allowing the souls re-entry into the corporeal world. Her spine vibrated at the thought, fear or excitement making her mouth turn dry.

She continued down the mountain, eyes skittering across pebbles that shone like jewels. Every flower shone like the moon itself, stretching their necks towards the sky to absorb the light.

The mist hit her first. She hadn't realized how far down she'd traveled until she felt the softness of the grass under her feet, heard the lapping of water. There were three Crystal Ponds in the village, appearing and disappearing from the landscape over the decades. She recalled the stories the elders told her--that the souls would congregate here. Hold ceremonies for what they once were and who they've become. That they'd dip their spectral toes into the blazing crystal waters and turn into flesh once more, until the last ray of Soul Moon slipped behind the horizon. And in some of the stories, they remained mortal.

A myth, she whispers to herself. A myth, a myth, a myth.

In the mist, she wouldn't be able to distinguish between ghost and flesh anyway. Everything was in shades of grey, and she couldn't even see the mountains anymore. She couldn't see the water, couldn't even see the sky. Her breath trembled, making white clouds in the air. Her shoes sunk into wet, marshy land, and she struggled to walk forward, squinting into the mist.

A shrieking wind slipped by her ear, deathly cold, and she fell to her knees, her legs squelching in the mud. Her hair blew across her face, the sound of rushing water growing louder and closer, and suddenly everything lit up: figures swarmed in her vision, close and far, with and without features. They looked like shadows against the never-ending light of the Soul Moon.

And all at once, the world went silent. The wind stopped and her hair fell limply against her face and neck, sticking to the moisture at her temples. Her ears rang in the silence. The mist was cleared.

In front of her was the Crystal Pond. The water was calm and shimmering, sparkling in the bright spot light of the Soul Moon. Tendrils of fog still drifted off the surface of the water, but they dissipated as quickly as a breath. And the souls. The souls were real.

It looked as if the entire village were here, their bodies shining as brightly as stars. They were so bright it hurt, but she couldn't look away. Her hands numbly pulled her notebook and a pencil out of her backpack, her eyes barely blinking. Not a soul looked at her, and she wondered if they could see.

They stood at the edge of the water, none of them touching the pond. In fact, the water drew away from them if they strode too near. They walked like any humans walked, feet planted on the ground firmly, squashing the grass underneath their feet. If they didn't glow eerily white, she'd think they were simply regular people bathed in light.

Trembling, she began to draw, not bothering to even look down at her notebook as she did. She drew the souls that looked more like comets than people. She drew the souls that had beard and glasses and robes. She drew the souls the size of newborns and children smaller than herself. She drew the souls that towered over the pond like trees, the souls that intertwined with others so completely they were one, the souls that wore expressions of joy and sorrow and pain and hope.

She drew until her hand ached, watching them walk to each other and touch fingers. They circled the pond, only a few daring to try and touch it. The water would rear away from them, pull back and reveal the dry silt underneath. The souls did not speak or sing or chant or pray; they didn't need to.

And when the very last glimmer of the Soul Moon sunk behind the mountains in the distance, she watched the souls fade away. Swirling together in a mass of light and stardust, pulled past the horizon and back home. She knelt at the edge of the water, where it pooled around her legs but didn't touch her notebook. She looked down, let the wind rifle through the pages of drawings, showing her that she'd filled the entire book. Every page another person, another expression, another glimpse into something beyond her comprehension. And then her gazed wandered down to her body, which shone with the soft misty light of the Soul Moon, despite it being gone.

She watched curiously as the light emanating from her own arms and legs spilled into the water. She stood, and set her backpack on the edge of the Crystal Pond, noticing the translucence of her own skin, feeling the water lapping at her ankles. When she looked to the sky, there it was, as she expected it to be: the Soul Moon perfectly above her. Too bright to look at. She felt the water rise, felt the Soul Moon grow closer and closer, felt the warmth of its light on what was left of her skin. And then it enveloped her, as it does all things in the end.

A child found her notebook at the edge of the Crystal Pond the next morning, completely dry and owner-less. In it, there was a drawing of everyone who had ever walked the village and gone. And at the end, the very, very last page, was a drawing of the girl herself, kneeling at the edge of the Crystal Pond with her head raised to the Soul Moon.