XVIII. The Moon

Some claimed she was named for the long-nosed wolves that wandered the canyons. They were rarely seen, and when they were, they were always bone-thin, with their red and black fur falling out in patches. When they howled at the moon, their songs echoed on the rocks like a greedy laugh.

Others said the desert earned her name for the ways the heat played with the mind. The sun boiled up the sugar water we call a brain until one would start to see things, hear things. Spend long enough out there and she would surely turn you stark raving mad until you laughed and laughed yourself into a dry and painful death.

Some people said that she was truly the desert that laughed, mocking the cold dead with waggling finger – no sympathy to be found for the fools who got lost in her.

Who really knows how anything gets a name? It didn’t matter too much, anyway, when death was at your door. Like laughter, the desert was spreading around the canyons. The ugly gray plants turned black at their thorns and curled in on themselves. All types of critters – the ones that didn’t have the guts to run away – started cooking on the rocks, feeding the scorpions until even they rolled over dead beside. Even the wolves, resilient as they were, dwindled as the years wore on, killing each other or starving until the only ones left were as rare a sight as water and kept well enough alone in the deep canyons.

And speaking of water, well… The desert didn’t just creep outward, it seemed. She crept downward, too, touching the places beneath the earth that had kept the water hidden. That’s when the wells started to run dry in the towns along the edge of the Laughing Desert. The people there were already stick thin as it was, living off whatever food they could scrape up off the land, but when the water started to go – well, that was that. People had no choice but to pack up and leave, or else stay ‘longside the critters and die (which many chose to do).

But one place, out in the west past Stanby, and not too far from where the Chelsea boys used to stomp, a small cluster of folk managed to remain resilient on the edge of Laughing. Year after year, their well kept on pumping life, and the ground kept giving them just enough to get by, and so the people of this town stayed there.

Now, mind you, there was little to keep them there anymore. There were no other towns for miles and miles in any direction ‘cept toward Stanbys. No gold to mine, no travelers to trade with. The people there were simply surviving because it was the only thing they knew to do. Until the Laughing spread their way, they would stay right put.

In this surviving town, there was a certain man. Well, there were a handful of men, in fact, and some women, and a few younguns, but they’re besides the point. The man in question was tall, darker than the desert night, and lonely. He had lived in that town for all his life and was afraid of leaving. He was out wandering one night, just strolling along the desert sands – for what purpose, neither he nor I could say – when he came across a wolf hide. It was red and velvety black, and lying on a rock on the edge of a great red canyon, turned silver in the light of the moon.

This was a strange sight, of course, that a hide – all in one piece and mighty soft – would be left lying here, of all places. And, well, as hot as those desert sun could be, the desert moon was just as cold, and she had been even colder as of late. So the man thought that he could take this hide and make it into a coat for himself. And so he reached down and lifted it from the rock, but he jumped back with a start. Beneath the hide, there was a scorpion, black and scaly, that had been hiding there. It glistened in the moonlight, then darted away. The man shook off his fright and admired the hide, and, deciding it was good for a coat, he took it home and fashioned it as such.

It wasn’t long before the man and his wolf hide became the talk of the town. It was a beautiful coat that he made, and not one of his neighbors could reckon where he had come about a wolf hide like that. He told them it had been a gift from the moon Herself, and many of them seemed to believe him, since that was as likely as any reason they could conjure. He wore his coat proud when the nights got cold, and when the sun came up in the morning, he hung the fur up on his wall for all to see.

After some time, he was wandering the desert again and came across the same old rock and the silver canyon where he had found the wolf hide. Lo and behold, there was a woman there. She was as naked as the day she was born and curled up on the rock like a sleeping dog. Except she was not sleeping – she was weeping bitterly, and her wails echoed so loud in the canyon below. The man approached her slowly, thinking she may be lost, or mad, or both. When he was close to her, he spoke as gentle as he could, asking her why she was weeping. She sat up from the rock and looked into his eyes, and in them he saw the beauty of a thousand constellations. Her hair was a black river snaking through the canyon, and her eyes were silver like the moon that hung above them, and every way she moved was like the quiet dancing of a fire on a starlit night. The woman spoke to him with a voice strong like a churning river.

“Why is it so cold?” she asked him.

He took the wolf skin from his back and placed it around her shoulders. As beautiful as the woman was, the man still did not like to part with his hide, but he saw that it brought her comfort and warmth. As quickly as the hide touched her skin, her eyes softened and she fell asleep right there on the rock. Not knowing what else to do, the man carried her from the desert and brought her to his home. He laid her in the bed and, taking the wolf hide from her, wrapped her in the blankets that he kept there. Then, without really knowing why, the man placed the wolf hide in a trunk at the foot of his bed and locked it away.

In the morning when the woman awoke, the man comforted her and listened to her story. To his surprise, he learned that the woman did not know her name, nor where she came from, nor even where she was. He took care of her in his home, bringing her food and clothes and water. After a time, the man and the woman fell in love. She gave herself a name – Irene – and discovered that life beside that man, in that lonely house in that lonely desert town to the west, near Stanby, was not so bad. But when Irene left the house and walked in the town, she found, to her dismay, that the other folk did not take kindly to the strange and beautiful desert woman. They whispered about her, calling her the “laughing woman,” and saying that she was a witch of some kind. They covered their mouths from her dust as she walked, saying she would bring a curse onto the town by her wicked ways.

Irene learned to keep safe in the house during the day, and only leave when the sun set and the moon took her place. In the darkness, safe from the prying eyes of hateful folk, Irene wandered in the open sky, breathing in the air and singing sweet lullabies to the Laughing Desert. Wherever she went, the weeds swayed to the melody, and the scorpions danced in time, and the red wolves laughed along. Every night, Irene walked on the sand, following a trail that she could not see, but one that she felt was leading her home. But every night, after the light left the desert, the cold would turn Irene around and send her back to the man. She would stumble inside, shivering and weeping with grief over what she could not have. The man tried to comfort her, but all the while, he kept the wolf hide locked away in the trunk where she could not use it to keep herself warm.

Over the years, the man continued to loved Irene, and she loved him too, and they had children together. Irene loved those children as fierce as a late summer fire, and for a while, she forgot about the lullabies in the desert and the place that felt like home. The people in town forgot about her, too, and left the family to be. And maybe they could have lived that way for many more years, but the Laughing Desert had different plans. See, in all those cold nights before, the Desert had fallen in love with Irene and her beautiful songs. She longed to hear the lullabies again, and so the Desert spread her Laughter into that last, lonely town.

It happened quick, without any kind of sign. One day, the well was dripping steady, and the next day, when a child went to fetch some water, only a scorpion scurried out, black and scaly.

For most people, that was that. They had endured for long enough in that place, longer than anyone else, and the Desert had called their bluff. They didn’t waste any time packing what little they had and setting off on that long journey. The man knew that he and Irene would have to bring their children away from that place, too, no matter how hard it would be. What good is a home that can’t keep you? What good is a land that can’t feed you? That night, the man told Irene – the woman he loved more than anything in the world – that they would have to leave. Irene did not shed a single tear. She told the man that she understood, and then she left, leaving to walk the desert one last time.

Out in the cold, she sang her lullabies once again. Her voice shook a little, since it had been so long since she used it, but she remembered after a time. Before long, the weeds swayed and the wolves howled again, joining her in the forgotten song. The night grew colder, though, and Irene’s hands and feet turned stiff in the bitter wind. She pushed deeper, closer to the canyon that called to her, further than she had ever gone before, but the cold became too much to bear. Finally, Irene let out a long, hollow cry, one that echoed on the rocks, and she fell to the ground and wept at the thought of leaving this place.

Well, that kind of noise is sure to draw some attention. When Irene had shed nearly every tear she had, and the cold was close to soaking into her bones, lo and behold, a critter heard her wailing. A scorpion, black and scaly, had followed her lullabies all the way from the town, and had watched her while she wept. Seeing how cold she was, the scorpion put two-and-two together. He came up out of the brush and spoke to Irene.

“Hey, miss,” he said shyly.

“Not now, little one,” Irene said through tears, but he didn’t listen.

“I see you’re mighty cold,” the scorpion said. “I know of a wolf hide that would fit you proper. It kept me warm once before, and it will do the same for you.”

“All that may be true, little one, but I don’t have that hide.”

“Surely you do,” the scorpion insisted. “The man you love has that hide. He took it from that rock over there, on the edge of the cliff, many years ago.”

Irene thought about this, and she recalled a memory from long ago, like it was a dream, of the man placing a fur hide around her shoulders to keep her warm. Irene thought then about the old locked trunk at the foot of the bed. Pushing herself to her feet, Irene turned her head away from the wind and ran, as fast as her feet could carry her, all the way back home beneath the moonlight.

When she arrived, the man and her children were fast asleep. She found the key tucked into the man’s boot, crept quietly to the trunk, and opened it. There, lying at the bottom, was the wolf hide. Irene at once remembered all that she had once been, beneath the light of the moon, a wolf running wild and free in the canyon, and Irene was overcome with sorrow beyond words.

She wrapped the hide around her shoulders, kissed her children, and ran. She ran far, far into the Laughing Desert, singing her lullabies all the while, until she reached the edge of the canyon and looked down. At the bottom of the canyon, she saw her wolf cubs, who looked back up at her. Irene knew then that she could be with neither her children, nor her cubs, for she was neither a woman nor a wolf anymore. Irene looked up toward the moon, which watched over all the creatures in the desert, and Irene cried out to her.

Woe to me, I have no kin
the name I wear don’t fit my skin
With cubs of moon and cubs of sun
my laughter now is surely done.
Oh silver fire, the desert night
listen, hear your daughter’s plight
Find for me a place to sleep
where all my children I can keep

The moon heard her song and had pity on her. She stirred the wind into a great storm that carried Irene up into the stars. In the sky, Irene could see all of her children, and she knew that it was the Moon all along who had loved her and kept her. The Laughing Desert howled in despair, forever parted from Irene and her songs. Her weeping echoed along the canyons all the way to the home of the man, who woke in his home with a start and saw that Irene and the wolf hide were both gone. Leaving the children safe in bed, he ran out into the cold desert in search of his true love. He ran into the bitter wind, all the way to the rock where he had found her all those years ago, but she was not there.

“Irene, my love!” he was all he could say.

The scorpion found him there and told him about Irene, the wolves, and the moon. The man looked up and saw a new constellation: the Red Wolf, leaping in the western sky. The Laughing Desert heard the man weeping, and she saw that the man truly loved Irene as much as she did. Moved by his love and his sorrow, the Laughing Desert brought the water back to the town, and sent even more than before, so much water that green grass and wildflowers grew there. All the people and more came back to live there, and the man and his children had great luck for the rest of their lives. The man even struck gold one day when he claimed a wolf’s howl brought him to where the gold was.

To this day, if you’re out wandering near the canyons to the west, near Stanby, keep your ears peeled for the sound of laughter. Many say that a great wolf, with red and black fur, guards the cliffs, and any who stray near may hear her cries still. And if you look to the west at night, you can see the Red Wolf running free ‘longside that silver fire, and watching over all of her children – those of wolf and those of man.

~ the end ~
JNP