Waking the Moon

clutched at their cheap silk kimonos as they strode offstage. He’d actually started to fuzz out on the girls, lost in his own dreamscape. It was seeing Annie again, and thinking about Oliver and the others—something he’d been doing too much of since Hasel’s death. He dipped his head to light another cigarette—he had myriad packs tucked into his pockets, like a hiker padded with trail mix—tossed the match on the floor, and swiped his long hair back from his eyes. And whistled.

At the edge of the stage, near the mirrored alley leading back to their dressing rooms, three girls stood watching him. Not the kind of girls you usually saw at places like this, either. They were far too young and brown, slender and restive as mink, their long dark hair pulled into topknots from which stray tendrils trailed like smoke. They reminded him of child prostitutes back in Manila, girls he’d seen washing in the runoff from hotel laundries. These three looked way underage, their bodies muscular and lean, small-breasted like young girls’ bodies but with swelling hips. They were barefoot, and naked except for copper bracelets about their tiny wrists and ankles and silver necklaces upon their breasts. They stood side by side by side, staring at Baby Joe with narrow black eyes and smiling.

“Dios ko,” he murmured. “New floor show.”

He stared back at them and finished another drink. His mouth tasted burned from too many cigarettes, and the vodka was starting to give him a headache. He knew he should think about paying up and heading out to Failte, but he wanted to see what those girls were up to.

He didn’t know how long he’d been watching them, but after a while he realized that the music had changed, from a monotonous downtown club standard to something he couldn’t place. One of those eco-techno anthems, all soft percussives and breathy vocals in a language nobody could understand. Only in this music there was the rhythmic pulse of the sea and a faint hissing sound, steady and measured as his own breath.

“Hey,” whispered Baby Joe. The girls didn’t move. There was none of the usual chatter between performers, just those intense dark eyes boring into him. “Nice.”

A moment later the girls took the stage. Not a replay of the same slow grinding dance he’d been watching all afternoon, but like circus acrobats vaulting into a ring. They leapt onto the raised platform, springing airy and careless as children through the smoke, their bare feet slapping the mirrored floor. Once there they seemed surprised: they stared giggling down at their reflections, pointing and hiding their faces behind their thin brown hands. Baby Joe glanced around to see if anyone else thought this was strange, but no one seemed to take any notice at all. The place had grown more crowded, but most of the clientele was jammed up against the bar. He turned back to the stage again.

One of the girls was listening to something—a cue, perhaps—poised like a Balinese legong dancer, her hand cupped around her ear like a curved leaf. With a cry she whirled on one heel and darted across the stage, stopping to raise her head. With murmured exclamations the other two raced after her, and began somersaulting and twirling, leaping to catch one another and racing apart again, like beads of mercury skimming across the floor.

Baby Joe watched them, breathless, his heart pounding. Their bracelets slid up and down, their anklets clattered as they danced and laughed, fingers brushing their girlish breasts and curling black hair tumbling about their shoulders. It was like watching the courtship of mayflies above a stream, all slender legs entwined amidst the ghosts of wings. In and out, up and down, until their steps assumed a pattern, the sound of their bare feet a muted tantara that was both summons and warning, and utterly hypnotic. And there was a voice as well, a woman’s voice, so low and musical it might have been inside his head, whispering.

It is time. It is time…

Baby Joe jerked upright: where had he heard that before? He shuddered and fumbled at his jacket, searching for cigarettes. His mouth was dry; he needed another drink, but before he could signal the waitress one of the girls ran up to him and struck him under the chin, giggling, then darted off again.

“Dios mio.”

Baby Joe began to sweat. It wasn’t just her touch, those tiny fingers skimming above the loose collar of his T-shirt, or the way her hair had momentarily fallen across his face, warm and oddly tensile. He looked about, even more uneasy; as though he had remembered a dream from his childhood in another language, a garbled message he had not until this moment understood.

All around him the room looked the same—too bright, the men at the bar stupefied with drink or lust, the waitresses yawning and chatting with the other dancers. But when he turned at the stage again it was like he was in a different place. The mirrored floor broke into motes of silver and brown as the dancers whirled and leapt, feinting and dodging some unseen foe. There seemed to be other things in the air as well—flies maybe, or were they cockroaches?

No. They were butterflies, great violet-winged butterflies that floated between the girls, as though the dancers’ soft cries had somehow been made carnate. Now and then a girl would leap as though to grasp one of the lovely creatures, but their slim fingers always closed on empty air. Then it seemed they would employ ropes to snare the butterflies: Baby Joe watched in dreamy amazement as thin brown cords whipped about the girls’ heads as they pirouetted and struck at the swallowtails above them. And somehow even this bizarre capering was familiar to him; as was the smell of something burning, sweet and pungent like katol incense, and the echo of that insistent voice.

It is time.

“Fucking A, man.” He forced himself to look away from the dancers, tried to stand but his legs gave way beneath him. With a grunt he crashed back into his chair. Laughing, the girls darted up to him. This time all three struck him, hard enough that he gasped, then ran off, calling out to one another in words he couldn’t understand.

But if their words still made no sense, their motions did. It was like he was watching some bizarre shadow play: the three girls shades of someone else, someone he should remember, someone he knew—it should be easy. And why was it he couldn’t get to his feet no matter how he tried, why couldn’t he escape them? Because now, instead of striking at the butterflies, they struck him, their little hands much more forceful man you would think, their nails piercing him like tiny beaks. The cords they wielded like whips, and lashed—but gently—at his cheeks and shoulders. When he struggled to avoid their touch, they would only laugh the more, in high sweet voices. Then one might pluck at his jacket, while another would take his hand in hers and kiss it, her tongue sliding across the ball of his thumb before her sharp teeth sank into the flesh there and he cried aloud.

Baby Joe shut his eyes. His head throbbed, his heart hammered in his chest as though someone pounded him mercilessly.

“No!”

At the sound of his own anguish it all came back to him. The field, and Angelica weaving in and out among the trodden-down grasses, her bare legs streaked with dirt and sweat. He could see where her heels had left small indentations in the dust, and smell the sweetness of dried vetch and clover she had crushed in her passing. A few yards away from her the bull watched, stolid and unmoving as Baby Joe himself. But now Baby Joe knew, and understood, and surely the bull never had.

It is time.

A howl as he struggled to get to his feet. Again the girls laughed, but there was no mockery in their voices now. Instead they were gentle, even soothing, as though they had tired of their play and were ready now for some more serious pastime. They gathered round him, their hands surprisingly strong as they grasped his arms and drew him forward. He tried to shake them away but it was no use—they were too strong, he was too drunk, too exhausted to fight. About his head the butterflies weaved their own tipsy patterns in the air. A spicy scent surrounded him, something else remembered from his childhood. Crushed coriander seeds and sandalwood and katol incense, the bite of sour orange pulp in his mouth. He felt himself being lowered to the floor, the girls’ hands everywhere upon his body—cheeks, forehead, arms, chest—their touch warm and smooth and dry. When he blinked the air seemed filled with snow, but then he saw that it was not snow but a sort of colored dust like pollen. His hands were coated with it. He brought a finger to his lips and tasted honey; looking down at the floor he saw that it was littered with the broken wings of butterflies, grey and colorless. Their scales filled the air, atoms of rust and violet, and settled like ash upon his cheeks.

Before him the girls knelt with arms extended. From their open hands dark cords slid to the floor, rustling. Their mouths were moving, he could not hear them but it didn’t matter anymore; he knew he was dying. And