He had often wondered if the sky was different on the far side, but now that he was looking through it, he recognized with relief the spires and whispers of galaxies he already knew, while other friendly stars winked at him, tinkling, scratching and drawing long hissing breaths that rippled through the vastness of the deep space. In front of him, the arc of light on the horizon became thicker and thicker, stretching like a ghostly blanket on plains and mountains, on every visible surface apart from the walls of the craters. Aarvo saw that immense luminescent expanse swaying against the backdrop of night in space like the hair of an immense animal of time long past and stopped in his tracks. It was true then, his mother's back was hairy for real! Was she all like that from side to side? Was it the monsters eating away at her insides that had turned her like that? But how? And if they got hold of him, would they do the same to him? Aarvo tightened the grip on the moonstones in his hand. “…Horrible creatures from deep space…” If they could fly, though, it didn't matter how dangerous and cruel the monsters waiting for him were—he had to go; he had to find a way to escape to Eera. He swallowed the knot stuck in his throat and resumed his advance. As he got closer, he grew more and more certain that what was in front of him wasn't an atmospheric phenomenon, but something solid, a thick coat of hair covering the back of the moon. When he finally came to about a hundred steps from the glowing expanses, he started feeling heat waves radiating toward him in a buzz of crackling sighs that caressed his skin as if to lure him in. With his core thundering in his mouth, he stared at the expanse of ghostly hair rising and falling, bending and swaying, ebbing and flowing as if an invisible hand were stroking it. He shivered despite the heat, then caught a glance of something out of the corner of his eye: a smooth oval shape, perhaps a head, which, white, was swaying in the midst of that shifting, indistinct mass. Aarvo froze—was that the head of a monster of the far side? A ghost, a dead thing staring at his living flesh with envy and sinister intent? He stood still, studying the strange sight for several moonminutes, watching it as it kept swaying aimlessly, apparently without life or will of its own, without a real body, but attached to a single thread of moon hair that tied it to the ground. In the end, he became convinced this strange thing wasn't a foreign body, but an integral part of the moon hair, a lump, an excrescence of the hair itself that wasn't going to bother him. Keeping an eye on it, he approached the edge of the glowing expanse. Not knowing what to expect from this strange hair, he threw one of the moonstones he was holding. When the stone fell through the thicket of hair, the threads fanned out around it, exposing the bare ground. Aarvo stared in disconcert at their strange behavior. How could these things move, if they were dead? Or were they just half-dead? Were they ghosts like the sickwalkers...? Half-dead and half-alive? Alive enough to hurt him? He shuddered at the idea, but was reassured by the fact that at least the moon hair hadn't tried to strangle, bite, burn or eat what he had thrown. He stepped even closer and when he stretched his arm to touch a thread of moon hair, it bent back as to avoid him, as if it didn’t like to be touched. He stared at it fascinated and curiosity slowly filled the void left by fear. Then he dared: he snapped his fingers forward and grabbed the thread of hair before it could slip away. It felt lukewarm on his skin, flexible, light, as it twisted weakly trying to break free. He played with it a little longer, then without giving himself time to think, he charged through the thick of luminescent coat. The hair immediately bent away, giving way almost with respect. Aarvo scanned the landscape and spotted a flat mountain in the distance that towered above the rest. Like everything else, it too was wrapped in a thick coat of moonhair that softened its features, making it blend in with the dazzling white that stretched in every direction. Its height made it the perfect observation point for taking a look at his surroundings. Aarvo set out and in less than a moonhour reached the foot of the mountain range. He started climbing through the expanse of moonhair and, as he went higher, he started noticing again that the wall of the craters nearby were bare, completely free of moonhair, unlike everything else that surrounded them. From above, it seemed clear why: the craters were nothing more than huge gashes in the coat of moonhair created by the impact of boulders of deep space. The explosion had disintegrated huge chunks of the expanses, while the following rain of debris, which went to form the crater walls, had buried some more. That was why the moonhair stopped at the base of the craters and didn’t grow on either the outer or inner walls. Aarvo made it to the summit of the mountain and suddenly caught sight of a few white figures wiggling around at the base of the nearest crater below. Instinctively, he crouched down in the thick of the moonhair, hiding. “Sickwalkers…” he hissed through his teeth: sickwalkers gathered around a crater, flailing around in a strange manner as if they were dancing or dancing or wailing in chorus. He kept looking at them and noticed that none of them was rolling around. All of them wriggled their deformed bodies, staying firmly in place. There were a lot of big ones and small ones, some so tall that they looked like ghostly tongues of fire. Was this gathering some kind of meeting, a celebration? Did they come out at night to dance around the craters? But why? By day they wandered alone through the endless fields of the moon and at night they gathered here? To find some company? Even such disgusting things needed company? For a moment, he felt some sympathy for those horrible creatures, because if they were able to be friends with each other, they couldn't be so bad, but then fear took over again. He had no intention of approaching so many of those creatures all gathered together. They might be friends with each other, but if they turned against him, he'd as good as gone. He gave a better look at his surroundings, but struggle to make out any clear shapes against the glaring white that stretched in all directions. After some time though he managed to see that even around some of the other craters lines of sickwalkers danced their strange dance, wriggling pale and luminescent against the gray ground. Besides them, he caught sight of handfuls of lumps clustered in scattered order at the base of some slopes in the plains nearby. Aarvo scanned the landscape for a while in search of some movement that betrayed the presence of the other monsters, those of which his mother had spoken of, but saw nothing. Perhaps, he thought, they were sleeping in their burrows—“They nested under my skin”—and would wake up at sunrise. He shuddered while the plains before his eyes suddenly filled with monsters chasing after him, then shook himself and sneaked away. |
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