Waking the Moon

Oh, she is still a mystery to me…

All too soon her voice died away. There was an instant of silence in which I could feel the last cold notes dissolving on my skin; then everyone began yelping and cheering.

“Whoa, Harmon!”

“Bravo!”

“Brava, bella!”

I looked over my shoulder and saw Angelica and Oliver leaning against the wall. Oliver was wearing the same clothes he wore last night, and Angelica had on her same dress, with a faded maroon sweatshirt that read Northeast Kingdom Abbey pulled on over it. She was red-cheeked and smiling, applauding wildly. She looked younger than I had ever seen her, more like a freshman college student and less the mysterious femme fatale. Her hair was loose and uncombed and, without its exquisite maquillage, her face was sweet and girlish.

But Oliver: Oliver looked awful. Chalk white, his blue eyes shadowed and so dark they looked like raw holes. His hair hung lank about his cheeks and he stared fixedly at his hands, flexing and unflexing his fingers. Every now and then his mouth twitched, as though he were trying to keep from laughing or crying aloud.

If I were you, I’d be worried about Oliver…

I stared at him, as drawn as I had been by my first vision of his fey prep school beauty. But now something truly terrible hung about Oliver: no more that casual aura of adolescent abandon, but a palpable air of ravagement and decay. His expression was vacant yet at the same time almost demonically intense. He rocked back and forth, back and forth, shifting his weight as though it hurt him to rest too long on one foot. Abruptly he moved away from Angelica with a queer shambling gait, more like a wounded animal than a person.

“Oliver—” Angelica called after him. But instead of turning to her, Oliver stopped and looked at me.

I froze. I was overwhelmed by dread—that he would say something to me, that he would call my name, and so doom me to whatever horror had consumed him.

Instead Oliver only smiled, his own sweet crooked smile. He shook his head, as though seeing me had awakened him from his stupor, and looked down at his feet. He was wearing his customary black wing tips without any socks, but there was a nasty gash on one ankle, the wound black and the flesh around it grossly swollen. I cried out and started toward him, but someone grabbed my arm.

“Sweeney!—” Annie popped up beside me, grinning. “What’d you think?”

“Hmm?”

“My singing. Didn’t you like it?”

“Huh? Oh sure, Annie—sure,” I said absently, then turned to see Oliver and Angelica near the door. She was holding his hand, talking and gazing at him with worried eyes; but Oliver ignored her. He was staring straight ahead, his eyes fixed on something I couldn’t see. Angelica lifted his hand to her lips and kissed his knuckles—they were scraped raw and black with dirt—but he never looked up. I tried to catch his eyes, willing him to notice me, but Oliver’s gaze never wavered from whatever dreamscape had captivated him. “Annie, look at Oliver—do you think he’s okay?”

Annie shook her head, her dark eyes troubled. “I don’t know.” She shifted her guitar case and shrugged. “But those Molyneux scholars—somebody always keeps ’em from falling. Come on—”

We walked in silence to our room. Once again, Angelica had somehow gotten there first.

“Sweeney! Annie! What’s up?” She still had on Oliver’s sweatshirt, and there were burrs in her softly curling hair. “You know, I think I will go to that thing tonight in Hasel’s room. You guys up for it?”

“Sure.” I glanced at Annie, cleared my throat, and asked awkwardly, “Is—what’s Oliver up to?”

For a moment Angelica’s smile looked strained. Then, “Oliver will be there. Don’t you worry. Ciao, Sweeney—”

She slipped into the bathroom. I sat on my bed and turned to Annie. She pursed her lips, wriggling her fingers as she blew a kiss at me.

“Ciao, Sweeney,” she said.

When we got to Hasel’s room, things seemed ominously silent.

“Hey! The girls are here!” Annie yelled. She frowned, kicking aside an empty beer bottle. “What’s going on, Hasel? Is this a wake, or what?”

“Warnick gave me a hard time about all the noise last night,” explained Hasel. “So we figure we’ll just go outside. You guys have warm clothes on?”

“Angie doesn’t,” Annie said.

“That’s okay,” murmured Baby Joe. “She’s got her love to keep her warm.” He giggled soundlessly and tossed me a beer.

For a few minutes we sat around and made desultory conversation. I sipped my beer, Annie swung her feet restlessly and kicked at the rungs of her chair, Hasel and Baby Joe smoked in near-silence. Angelica stood by the window and gazed out at the night. The spectacular sunset had faded to a tattered fringe of black and red above the mountains. Elsewhere the sky was already black, save where the first stars clove through the darkness. Hasel finished his beer and stared at Angelica, after a moment said softly, “You sure look beautiful tonight, Angelica.”

She did, too: wearing a long-sleeved cobalt blue dress of champagne velvet, with a shirred bodice and silver embroidery and silver tassels hanging from the cuffs and hem. She had on the same half-moon earrings she’d worn the first time I met her. Against her throat hung the lunula. Every now and then she’d touch it, as though for reassurance.

“What? This old thing?” Angelica laughed, but her voice sounded odd: as though she were acting at being Angelica, pretending to be more self-assured than she really felt. “He should be here any minute—”

“I think,” Annie broke in, her eyes widening, “I think he’s here now.”

We all turned as a shadow filled the doorway—a shadow in stained tuxedo shirt and moth-eaten trousers and dirty black wing tips with filthy laces trailing behind them. The bare foot shoved into one of them was so swollen and bruised it looked black.

“Oh, Oliver,” whispered Angelica.

It was Oliver, all right; but his hair was gone. All that beautiful long hair, sheared away until there was nothing left but coarse black stubble. He must have tried to shave his skull—there were bald patches, and angry- looking cuts left by a razor.

I have never seen anyone so appallingly changed. His face was still beautiful, and with his shorn head, the high cheekbones and shadowed eyes gave him a monkish look. But his eyes were wild, and all Oliver’s sweetness, all his sly humor and intelligence were gone from them. He looked sinister and frighteningly out of place, like the victim of some terrible accident who has crawled for miles and miles, finally to collapse on the lawn at a wedding.

For a minute we were all silent. Then Hasel started to clap.

“Way to go, man!” Hasel crossed to the door and drew Oliver into the room, laughing. “‘Bout time you got rid of that hippie hair!”

“Oliver,” cried Angelica. I thought she was going to burst into tears. “How could you?”

Still Oliver said nothing. He looked dazed, and let Hasel lead him to where the rest of us watched in awkward silence. Beside me Baby Joe cringed, and Annie for once was speechless.

“Hope you brought a hat, man,” Hasel went on heedlessly. “It’s cold out there —”

Oliver lifted his shorn head and stared at me, his eyes black and huge.

“Sweeney,” he whispered. “Save me, Sweeney.”