Page 1 of Tidal Creatures

BOOK INew Moon

Do not swear by the moon, for she changes constantly.

Then your love would also change.

—William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet

Lady Moon, will you dance with me

Just once while I am mortal?

For there is no woman I would rather

Gather in my arms.

—Talis Kimberley, “Lady Moon”

Sinus Asperitatis

TIMELINE: AUGUST 15, 2017. SIX DAYS TO THE ECLIPSE.

Always there was the moon.

Before humanity drew breath, the moon was there, shining in the sky, waxing and waning as it circled the world. It did not think. It did not dream. It was only the moon, endless and eternal.

With time, new creatures stirred and rose on the planet below. They saw the skies and were enchanted; they saw the seas and were afraid. Some saw the connections between the two, and they were lauded as wise ones and burned as witches, and still there was the moon. The moon, which watched but did not see, not yet, for no one had considered or suggested that it should.

Those new creatures saw the world so clearly and so strangely that it began to change itself to suit them. In tiny ways at first, but the world was very new; it had many tiny ways in which to change. Bit by bit they changed it through observance, until aspects of the universe itself began to take on the forms of these new beings, wearing their skins and seeing their reality through the eyes of the creatures, who called themselves “people.”

Those people looked up, and they saw the moon. They wondered what might live there, what glories and wonders the moon might conceal, and as they wondered, the universe changed again. Gods were born, gods who had just now come into being but had suddenly been there from the very beginning of everything, as reality adjusted to accommodate the always-present nature of things that hadn’t been only a moment before.

And for the first time, exactly as it had done every night since time began, the Moon rose.

There was little difference between the moon and the Moon, at least to the eye; they shone the same, hung in the sky the same, illuminated the night the same. They were one. But the Moon also walked the world; it lived the short, temporary lives of the people who had dreamt it into being, and while the moon was eternal, the Moon was temporary, waxing and waning from existence even as the moon waxed and waned from the sky.

Reality, self-organizing as ever, marched on, and the Moon split itself into innumerable pieces, each one with a body and mind of its own, and they continued, born and dying and mortal and eternal, all at the same time.

Always there is the Moon.

Aske is a goddess, and she walks down a tunnel filled with flashes of rainbow light against a background of dark so profound that it transcends darkness, becoming something else altogether. This is the everything, the glorious tunnel between worlds where she is called to do her duty as a divine reflection of the midnight sky.

Aske is also a nineteen-year-old girl from Minnesota, currently studying early childhood education in California. She had been considering colleges when the moon began speaking to her through her bedroom window, suggesting she consider Berkeley. Great things in Berkeley, the moon had said, before she had understood that she was the moon, the moon was her, and together, they were going to shine. Great things for you to learn and know and understand. Go to Berkeley.

Her grades had been good enough and her college fund had been healthy enough, and her desire to be away from her parents had been pronounced enough, and so off she’d gone, a suitcase in one hand and a transcript in the other, the moon whispering in the back of her thoughts like an imaginary friend. She’d worried at first about the growing clarity of that voice, wondering if she was losing her mind, and then one day the moon had become the Moon had become Aske, the goddess herself, sitting cross-legged on the edge of the dorm-room bed with her hands on her ankles, glowing with a faint silver-white light and smiling a hopeful, uneven smile.

“Your name is Eliza Benson, and my name is Aske, and you are nineteen years old, and I am without age, outside of time, and we are the same person, or we will be, if you allow us to be,” she’d said, voice earnest and soft and layered with an accent Eliza hadn’t known at the time. It’s not an accent that still walks the world; it has worn away by centuries of conquest and social unrest and change. “I am the moon goddess of the Sámi people, and you are a daughter of those same people, and I am here because we are meant to be combined.”

“Oh, no,” said Eliza. “I’m the daughter of a dentist and a school secretary from Minnesota.”

“Not in such immediate terms, silly,” said Aske, and laughed, and her laughter was like moonlight on the snow, shimmering and perfect, utterly unblemished by the world around her. “They were your ancestors, long and long ago. Not all who carry me are descended from my kind, but I prefer it when you are. It makes it easier for us to understand each other, if I embody a Moon whose tides your blood remembers.”

Eliza had stared at the girl for a while, then leaned over and poked her on the shoulder. Her skin had been cool and slightly yielding, like she was a well-built doll that just looked like a living woman. Aske had responded with a sigh and a sorrowful look, catching Eliza’s hand in her own.

“Let me tell you a story,” she’d said.

And Eliza, who was studying early childhood education for a reason, had settled on the bed, willing to listen to this impossible girl in this impossible situation as she said more impossible things. Somatic satiation of the soul is a thing, after all; once a concept has been repeated a sufficient number of times, it becomes easier to accept, to incorporate, to stop being seen as anything out of the ordinary. When Aske had first appeared on the bed, Eliza very nearly panicked. Now, after relatively little time, she was accepting the presence of a glowing girl who claimed to be the moon with surprising ease.

Even then, something about it had felt right. And the voice of the girl in front of her had been so similar to the voice that had been speaking inside her head that it seemed almost easier to just sit back and listen.