Moon-Flash Read Free Page A

murmuring. Everything was white. There were no familiar faces. A star was carrying her to the moon. The moon was huge, full, rising toward the Flash. In another moment it would come, in another . . . She looked back down to the Face where a betrothal ceremony was to be held, and she called to the upturned faces:
Farewell. But wait,
she thought in her sleep,
whose dream is this? I’m Kyreol.
Then she saw a hundred rainbows . . . And then only dream fragments.
    She woke up. Her arm was cramped against the stone. Her head felt stuffed with feathers, and she was thirsty. She pushed herself up to a sitting position and blinked a moment. The light had shifted away from the falls in front of her, and she knew she had slept for hours. But what a strange dream. Neither happy nor sad. A puzzle. She stood up slowly, straightening her clothes, wishing she could see if the paint had smeared on her face. She frowned at the flame, thinking of the dream, until she remembered the girls’ faces, painted, smiling, their soft touches, and she smiled, the first excitement quivering in her.
I am one of you.
She reached for the red skin, poured its contents into a little shallow in the rock that was colored and flecked from the contents of many other skins. She placed her left hand flat in the cold dye. Then, choosing her spot carefully, she put her handprintamong the hundreds of gold handprints that rose like butterflies on the black wall above the flame.
    I, Kyreol.
    She walked out of the cave, caught water in her hands. She washed, then drank deeply, clearing her head. A mixture of excitement and hunger welled through her as she made her way back down the trail.
Now the night can come,
she thought, walking out of the shadow of the Face into the tender, late afternoon light. The night, the Moon-Flash, the feast, the handclasp, the eyes meeting hers out of another mask of paint, a hood of feathers . . . And then the hundred wild red birds freed . . . 
Kyreol of Turtle-Crossing. I will live with Korre among the turtles.
    There was feasting when she returned, pregnant with her secret betrothal dream. The falls turned grey, then a feathery silver as the moon rose. It was full, blazing white, its light swallowing the stars around it. A perfect moon, ripe for the fire-flash that would bring good hunting, good harvest, good fortune in marriage. Two great fires were lit: one for her, one for her betrothed, who sat, a bird-child with a turtle on his forehead, on a skin decorated with feathers. She glanced across at him occasionally, wondering what he had dreamed. They would tell each other later. She was surrounded by women, but Terje came among them briefly, bringing her a leaf full of honeyberries. They shared them in silence, while the moon crept upward in the night toward the flash-point. Kyreol, watching the fire, saw in her mind the arrow of fire that caressed so swiftly, so brightly, the curve of the moon and disappeared. “What is it?” she whispered. “The Moon-Flash?”
    “It’s fire,” Terje said softly. “It’s a tree, an animal, the River. It’s the way the world is.”
    “But—”
    “You can divide water into its smallest piece, and it will still be water. You don’t ask what it is. The world is like water. It is just itself.”
    But,
she thought, not even knowing what she was trying to argue about. They finished the berries in silence, close to each other as they had always been. Terje tossed the leaf into the fire. They watched it turn into flame and smoke.
    “You see? Everything is one thing: there are only different shapes of it.”
    Then he kissed her on the cheek, something he had never done before, and rose. The women laughed at him; he went away scowling. Kyreol’s thoughts returned to the boy beside the other fire.
    As the moon neared the center of a square of stars, a silence fell. Kyreol and Korre were led from their fires to a carpet of skins and feathers, with all the River-signs, and the River