Tales by Moonlight

They’d given us a big room on the second floor, with windows that faced west towards the setting sun. When I walked in all the lights were off. A few of the women held candles, and one of the men, a slim fellow well into his thirties, black hair swept back to frame a sharp widow’s peak, was playing idly with a flashlight. He cast shadows against the wall beside the door; they were playful until they turned into intertwining snakes.

It was a writers’ meetup, one of the endless bits of trivia that piggybacked on the convention scene. World-building this time, though there hadn’t been a byline. World-building had been enough for me.

It was a full house too, and I was the last one there. Someone had stacked chairs against the blank, cream-colored south wall, hard black plastic affairs that I hadn’t seen since high school. I grabbed one and dragged it towards the wide circle in the center of the room, fighting the urge to turn it over and check for gum. Chairs scraped against the tile as my impromptu neighbors scooted far enough apart.

“Hello,” said a tall, imperious woman. A circle has no head, but one look at her, and I knew who’d taken charge. “We were just discussing our successes. The creations that we’re proudest of.”

“Yeah,” the man with the flashlight said, his snakes dancing across the wall, “and it was your turn.”

The woman offered him a tight-lipped smile and I settled in. It happened often enough, that there was history at these events I didn’t know about. The world off the page always felt like someone else’s story, complete with a first act that I’d barely even skimmed.

“I’m proudest of the olive tree,” she said. She leaned back in her chair, crossing one leg over the other. She wore a charcoal gray sweater, finely woven, the collar ringed by little owls. I blinked hard, and then I did it again. It must have been the light, but it looked like the owls were chasing each other.

She said, “I love olives, that salty crispness. With bread or cheese, pasta. And can you imagine a life without olive oil? I can’t. The olive was my finest hour.”

Then she turned on the man making shadow puppets. His flashlight sputtered and failed and he glanced down at it in annoyance before tossing it across the room. It hit the wall, a dull echo diffusing through the room.

“Well,” he said, “you’ve seen my snakes.”

“Snakes were a mistake,” someone across the circle called.

There was a laugh then, murmurs of agreement. I looked at the crowd again, considering. Besides the woman in the owl chased sweater and the man with the faulty flashlight there were at least two dozen authors in the room. It was a good turnout, and it was the sort of crowd where everyone at least looked like they should be successful. Each one of them was a character on their own. Some of them had come in cosplay, convincing armor or period dresses, or fascinating, almost inhuman makeup. Others could’ve passed for normal on any street in America if they hadn’t been just a little too beautiful, or a little too fit, or if their eyes had been just a little less clever. I felt shabby next to them, even though I’d worn my very best scarf, and I’d shined my shoes the night before.

“I suppose I made the fishing net too,” the man with the shadow puppets said, and at that, the circle quieted. There were grudging nods, respect. Then the man cracked a real smile, and it was the kind of smile that made you smile too.

“And I suppose,” he said, “that there were a few good tricks along the way.”

And so it went, the question passed along the circle: “What creation are you proudest of?”

A woman in a flowing leopard-print dress said that she’d created writing, and a man with a wispy white beard and one of those old, winged Chinese scholar hats claimed that he’d created literature, all of it.

Half a dozen people said that they were proudest to have created Man, molding people from mud or firing them like clay pots. Most said that they did it right the first time, a slim young man with long jet black hair and deep brown skin scratched at his jaw self-consciously, and he alone admitted that it had taken him a second try.

Then someone else stood. Like so many others, he had a long gray beard. He wore a white robe and no shoes, no sandals. He had deep-set wrinkles around his eyes, and big strong hands, a craftsman’s hands, or a carpenter’s. “What, none of you?” he said, chuckling. “Fine, I’m proudest of Woman. Adam was a lazy bastard, served him right to lose a rib. And besides, what a rib.”

The fellow with the shadow puppets hissed faintly, but the white-robed man simply waved him away. A faint voice beside me said that she was proudest of the stars, and then the circle came to me, and when the sudden silence broke over me it was like coming out of a trance. Outside the window, a few stars peeked through the smog. Somewhere in all that sharing, the daylight had bled away.

I wrapped the scarf tighter around my neck. My freshly shined shoe tapped a breakneck staccato against the floor. The woman beside me, the woman with the stars, rested her hand against my knee, though that did nothing to calm my nerves.

It was funny, I thought, there wasn’t a single thing that had been said in this room that was new, but the way they’d all said it—

There was so much pride in each of those distinct voices. These were people, some of them with histories, some of them too clearly separated for any prior common ground, but each of them burned with infectious passions of their own. Despite the occasional sniping, it truly felt like everyone here was happier for the sharing.

It was that thought that finally stilled me. I spoke, and for the first time that I could remember scattered stars pierced through the smog.

“I’m proudest of my gods,” I said. “I created this one—I still don’t where I got the idea— who’s the Goddess of Forgotten Hours. Those moments that just slip by you, all those times when you were lost in something, so deep that it’s like you weren’t even there, or you were, but there was somewhere else, somewhere better. I haven’t come up with her name yet, but she has a temple and priestesses, and—”

“Stop,” said the woman in owl sweater. She stood. They all stood. The world had gone quiet, no sounds but my breathing. My breathing. No one else’s.

“Do you mean to tell me,” she said, “that you are the one who makes new gods?”

I glanced around the circle. Beautiful women and beautiful men, and beautiful minds beneath. Passions.

“Of course,” I said, “it’s my favorite thing in the whole world.”

A ripple ran through them. There were murmurs in the back, quiet noises from shadows I’d never even noticed. The candles guttered and went out. Lit only by the stars, the walls fell away and all I saw were the people, impossibly large around me.

Then they knelt, all of them at once. I looked from face to shadowed face. I found the woman in the owl sweater, and all her owls were staring up at me, each one of them a different species, their eyes bright like the stars outside or the star-like jewels scattered through that other woman’s hair.

Snakes twined across the far wall, darker than the other shadows. I hoped that they were puppets, but the noise they made was far too real and far too insistent.

“Tell us more,” someone said.

“Please.”

“Yes, please!”

“Tell us something new!”

Little did they know, I had a lifetime’s dreams to share.

*****

THE END.