Shynot Broadilea

The Edge of the Moon

     Shynot Broadilea, who was never known for staying out of trouble, was hunting a fox-fish when she made the discovery that would one day lead to her losing everything. There was no particular reason for Shynot to hunt fox-fish. Her mother baked a perfectly good loaf of bread and put two boiled eggs in her pack this morning, so Shynot wasn’t exactly hungry.
     But she wasn’t not hungry, either.
     Fox-fish, like almost everything else on the moon, were white. Their bluish-white fur wasn’t easy to see when they lounged on gray-white rocks, next to brown-white grass, reflecting in silver water. Shynot might have missed the pack — or was it a school? — of fox-fish if one hadn’t been so startled by her that it yipped and dove into the water.
     On the moon it was easy to be startled by Shynot; she was just about the only thing that wasn’t a shade of white. The wild mane of her curly hair was blackish-brown, her eyes were golden-brown, and her skin was reddish-brown. While her tunic started out a grayish-white and her trousers started a grayish-black, by the time Shynot was done with them, they were brown with paint, food stains, and smudges or soil. Nothing about her belonged on the moon.
     As Shynot steered her boat closer, all the fox-fish tumbled and splashed into the silver water. They made a little cloud beneath her small ship, and Shynot lunged with her fishing net. Even the slowest fox-fish fluttered away.
     With something interesting— and possibly tasty— swimming away, Shynot’s lazy afternoon became a hunt. She leaned on the tiller and followed the cloud of silver in the midnight blue water.
     The fox-fish swam into a grove of white birch trees to escape.
     Every other time she’d sailed near those slender striped trunks, Shynot had kept her distance because her boat was too big to navigate through the half-drowned trees. But now, she needed to know whether fox-fish tasted more gamey or more fishy. So, she stripped off her feathered cap, her shoes, and all her extra layers of trousers and sweaters. Then she dove into the water after the fox-fish.
     The lake was cool but not icy and shallow enough for Shynot to see the roots of the birch trees. The white stones were rough under her bare feet, but Shynot stalked slowly, as patient as she was focused. The fox-fish darted between the shadows of the trees and the gray water lettuce and the snow-lily pads.
     When the fox-fish swam back toward her, Shynot suspected she’d found the edge of the lake. But she couldn’t see a shore? One of the slippery creatures swam too close to her net and in a flash, Shynot hoisted it out of the water. But she was distracted. There wasn’t nearly enough current for a waterfall. Only a thinning of the birches against the empty sky. Where was the shore?
     The fox-fish in her net whined and howled, still trying to get away. Not just from her net, but from… something else.
     When it bounced, Shynot lifted it higher. The animals had run out of places to swim, but there was nothing between the ground and the sky. A barren shoreline wasn’t strange— nothing grew on the huge beach in front of the Palace of the Moon. But such a thick grove of trees wasn’t growing out of the sand.
     “What’s out there?”
     In answer, the fox-fish thrashed free of the net.
     Shynot growled and tried to re-catch the creature, but the fox-fish splashed her in the face and fled.
     “Well,” Shynot glanced at the bluish-white sky through the grayish-white trees and decided. “I’m already wet. Might as well swim.”
     She tucked the net into the back of her shorts and dove down under the great birch roots.
     Instead of a shoreline, she found a wall—stone and shiny black, too tall for the water to spill over the edge. Not quite tall enough that Shynot couldn’t leap off the grainy bottom of the pond and grip the edge.
Her fingers slipped the first time. Then the second.
     The fox-fishes swam around her, nipping at the minnows all her leaping stirred up. Their glassy black eyes laughed at her.
     “Stupid fox-fish, I’m gonna eat one of you for sure.”
     The third time, Shynot caught the edge, but with only one hand, only enough to keep her from slipping off the smooth black stone.
     Her legs kicked and splashed, but the water did her no favors. She reached with her free hand and managed to find a better grip on the slick stone.
     The tips of her fingers wanted to snap off, but Shynot dragged herself up the wall. Then she got her elbow over. Then it was the easiest thing in the world to hoist the rest of herself up and finally get a peek over the wall.
     And that’s when Shynot accidentally discovered the edge of the moon.
*
     No one on the moon ever mentioned an edge. Not the moonbeams, nor the ghosts, nor the scholars who wandered through, nor the Moon Herself. Not even Mama thought to tell her world had a shiny black edge.
     Shynot peered over it.
     It wasn’t exactly darkness. And it wasn’t exactly empty.
     She pulled her knees onto the wall and crept forward to see better.
It was dizzying because there was… nothing. And yet, Shynot sensed everything… staring back at her. No animals. No plants. Nothing moving… but so many things.
     When she studied it too long, her head hurt.
     Shynot dropped back into the water, shocking a fresh cloud of minnows into the waiting jaws of the fox-fish. She grabbed a handful of gravel and clawed her way up to the ledge again.
     Nothing was still there—the same not-exactly-darkness and not-exactly-empty. Shynot dropped the handful of gravel over the edge.
It dropped in the usual way stones drop.
     Then kept dropping.
     Until the handful of white stones shrank and vanished from her view.
     “Huh…” Shynot squinted, but she could not tell if the stones had been swallowed or simply fallen so far she couldn’t see them. “What is that?”
     The nothingness did not bother to give clues.
     And, because she couldn’t answer that sort of question someone else’s help, Shynot left the wall alone. When she splashed back into the water, the minnows erupted again, and the fox-fish, greedy little things, swooped back in to feed.
     So did Shynot. She swung her net, almost thoughtlessly this time, and caught the biggest fox-fish. It chattered and screamed at her, but this time Shynot twisted the net to keep it closed and prevent her meal from escaping.
     “If you have anything to say, you better say it now, animal. Otherwise, you’ll be my lunch.”
     The fox-fish did not have anything to say, and after it was roasted over a bit of fire, it tasted equally fishy and gamey. Like a seal. Very delicious.
*
     Around midday when the sky was whitest, Shynot returned home to the Palace of the Moon. At a distance, the palace looked like a shining silver-white tooth against the pearl of the sky, but as she sailed nearer the balconies and windows became distinguishable from the bumpy exterior wall. The entirely of the palace seemed to Shynot to be big empty rooms that either over looked the forest or the ocean, or the courtyard that had been built in the middle of the palace mostly to give the empty room something to overlook.  All that emptiness always needed dusting and washing and when Shynot sailed very near to the palace she saw the woman who did all that cleaning.
     Her mother stood at the balcony closest to the river, sweeping in her neat efficient way.
     Shynot furled her sail so that the boat floated by slowly. “Hey, Mama!”
     Mama— so pretty and pale—belonged on the moon. Her skin was as polished and ivory as the tower. Her eyes were nightingales of pure black in her smooth round face. Her hair fell like water in well-tamed waves down her back, and her white dress never got stained. Instead, the fabrics floated like she was underwater, except where it fit tightly on her torso and upper arms. The loose sleeves never even got wet when Mama washed the windows.
     Shynot held up the fox-fish’s head and the remainder of its spine bones. “Mama! I brought you lunch!”
     Mama’s beautiful, dignified face crinkled with disgust, and she hissed through her teeth. “Didn’t you like the bread and eggs I gave you?”
     “I did. They were delicious.” Shynot leaned on the rail and grinned up at her mother. “But fox-fish is a… interesting flavor, too. I wrapped some of the meat in bark-paper for you. It’ll be wonderful with rice.”
     Everything was wonderful with rice.
     Mama glided over to the rail and held out her hands. Her iron shoes clinked on the stones.
     Mama’s iron shoes were the strangest thing. Though Mama always looked like she floated over the ground because of her big billowing skirts, she wore iron shoes.
     Shynot had asked many, many times about the shoes— why did Mama wear such heavy things? How did she manage to glide in them? Why did she only take them off when she was asleep or reading? And most importantly, why didn’t Shynot have a pair of sturdy iron shoes? Mama always said she’d tell someday.
     “Say, Mama, why do you always wear iron shoes?” Shynot handed her the bundle of meat and tossed the head and spine into the water.
     “Someday, I’ll tell you.” Mama smiled.
     Someday was not today. Maybe tomorrow.
     Mama looked over the bundle with polite interest, holding it in both hands far from the edges of her long wafting sleeves. “Where did you sail today?”
     “Upriver.” Before the boat drifted past the balcony, Shynot stuck an oar in the sucking mud and pushed the boat against the current. “I found a grove of birch trees and took a swim.”
     Mama frowned. “But it’s cold upriver. If you wanted to swim, you should have gone down the river.”
     “Well…” Shynot knew by Mama’s tone she wasn’t inclined to answer too many questions, but there was no shame in trying. “I didn’t really plan on swimming until I saw this stone wall through the trees. I couldn’t get my boat through.”
     The bark-paper crinkled as Mama’s hands tensed. “A black stone wall?”
     “That’s right,” Shynot leaned on the oar. “What was it?”
     “Early.”
     Shynot sighed. Her mother could be so cryptic sometimes. “Say again? What was it?”
     “Did you look over the edge?”
     Shynot considered lying, but Mama knew Shynot well enough to know she couldn’t not look over the edge of a mysterious black wall. “I did.”
     “Don’t go near it again.” Mama turned away and headed into the palace. “I’ll put this in the icebox, and at dinner, I’ll teach you a good sauce for creatures that live sometimes in water and sometimes on land.”
     “That’s it?” Shynot tossed the oar into the boat and leapt onto the balcony to chase her mother, dripping dirty water on the newly cleaned floors. “Mama, come on and just tell me. What is it beyond that wall?”
     Mama did not turn. “What do you think is beyond that wall?”
     “I don’t know… The edge of the moon?”
     “Well, that sounds right.”
     Shynot groaned at this terrible answer.
     Mama ignored her protest. “Get your boat before it dashes to pieces, and you have to make a new one.”
     “What’s past the edge? And does the edge go around the entire moon? What happens to things that go over the edge?”
     Mama turned sharply. “There is nothing past the edge. Yes, it does.”
     “Why haven’t I seen it before if it—?”
     “Death is what happens to things that go over the edge.”
     A loud thunk and the sounds of a boat splintering came before Shynot could answer her mother’s warning. Shynot could never tell if Mama’s timing was just that good or if Mama has some ability to just make things happen to end conversations she didn’t want to have.
     “Go save your boat,” Mama said. “And don’t go near the edge of the world again. The moon is vast. Explore the rest of it.”
     Shynot agreed to nothing.

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