Super Moon

A Fantasy Short Story

(image credit: kdshutterman/Shutterstock)

“What’s wrong?” asked Jake, looking into Diana’s eyes and pulling her a little closer. His arm was warm but felt constraining, like a python slowly tightening its grip on its prey.

“Nothing,” she replied in the most carefree tone she could muster. She would have come closer to the truth if she’d said, “Everything.”

As they entered the diner, Diana was uncomfortably conscious of several sets of teenage eyes following their every move. They weren’t so much looking at her as looking through her or around her to see Jake.

Jake acknowledged the guys with a nod and the girls with a smile as he led Diana toward their favorite booth. Well, his favorite booth, anyway. She didn’t like much of anything in a place that tried to pretend so hard that it was still the 1950s. The flickering lights of the juke box, the garish red upholstery of the seats, the whir of the ceiling fans, the shiny chrome countertops all annoyed her.

Ever the perfect gentleman, Jake motioned for her to sit first, then slid in beside her. He could have sat on the other side of the booth, but he always squeezed in with her.

Blocking her escape route.

She knew she was being unfair. Jake wasn’t trying to make her feel trapped and might have been crushed if he knew what she really thought. No doubt, he saw himself as the perfect boyfriend. He always made time for her and tried to consider her feelings—those he knew about, anyway.

A middle-aged waitress, whose brown hair was streaked with gray but whose skin was only slightly marked by wrinkles, delivered the menus.

“Diana,” she said. “Sonny. Nice to see you.”

“Lorna, nice to see you, too,” said Jake, untroubled by her use of his childhood nickname. Without even looking at him, Diana knew he had favored the waitress with one of his room-lighting smiles.

Diana nodded to Lorna and mumbled a greeting before the view outside the window captured her attention. The moon was full, as she’d noticed earlier. But now, it looked too large. Had it been so bright when they first got to the diner? Car tops gleamed like highly polished gemstones. Puddles of water glistened like molten silver.

“Super Moon,” said Jake, who must have followed her gaze. “A full moon when its orbit brings it closest to the earth.”

That couldn’t explain why it looked so much bigger and brighter now than it had just a minute or so ago. That’s what Diana wanted to say, but she knew it sounded crazy. Jake must have seen the moon before they came in, just as she had. It didn’t look bigger to him. She kept her mouth shut, but she couldn’t help continuing to stare at the moon.

“Moon touched, are you?” asked Lorna, chuckling. Turning to Jake, she said, “Better hold onto that one, Jake. Once a girl is moon touched, she’s likely to wander off.”

“Jake should be so lucky,” stage-whispered someone behind her. A few guys snickered quietly. Jake, looking pensive as if chewing on Lorna’s words, didn’t seem to hear.

Diana resisted the temptation to turn around. The stage whisperer had said nothing she hadn’t heard before—sometimes at a considerably higher volume.

Almost no one who had expressed an opinion on Diana’s relationship with Jake thought that they belonged together. She understood why. Tall and muscular, with eyes blue as the sky, Jake could have had any girl he wanted. When he stood just right, with his blond hair catching the sunlight, he appeared to have a halo, and his tan skin looked almost golden.

Diana often studied him for long periods. She wasn’t admiring him, though. She was looking for flaws that might explain why she wasn’t attracted to him. Even one would do. Some small blemish that would account for her indifference to him was all she asked. But she couldn’t find even the tiniest thing.

To make matters worse, she was in some ways his polar opposite. She wasn’t ugly. Even the girls most jealous of her relationship with Jake had never called her that. Forgettable would have been a more fitting label. Jake complimented her on her long, dark hair, but even she had to admit that there was nothing eye-catching about it, nor her pale skin, nor her average figure. Her rare gray eyes did stand out—but not in a good way. People called them eerie or haunting. Jake alone called them beautiful.

Why were they together? God only knew what Jake saw in her. She only wished she could feel about him the way everyone else did.

Why didn’t she end the relationship? She didn’t know how to break up without hurting his feelings. Pulling away would be like kicking a puppy in the face.

Besides, the very people who resented her for being with Jake would resent her more for breaking his heart. That was completely irrational—and inescapably true.

As for her parents, the only people who saw her as a suitable match for Jake, she could picture their disapproving frowns. They would think but not say, “You broke up with him?”

She sat in the booth, hemmed in by Jake, eating a burger and fries, drinking the house specialty boysenberry shake—and tasting none of it. Outside, the super moon continued to shine with unnatural brightness, drawing her eyes, fixing her attention.

Just as it had in her dreams.

She tried hard to shove that idea out of her mind. They were just dreams, after all. She was just a high school girl, not someone of such cosmic importance that the moon itself would try to communicate with her.

At some point, Jake had switched topics and was going on about the Halloween dance at school. He hadn’t actually asked her to go, probably assuming that their relationship made her his automatic date. She didn’t have the heart to tell him that she didn’t want to create another opportunity for people to wonder why the hell he was with her.

After dinner, Jake ordered pumpkin pie with extra whipped cream. She’d never seen anyone burn calories as fast as he did. But he was athletic and seemed to work out at least four hours a day. Diana spent a similar amount of time reading, yet another reason people couldn’t understand them as a couple.

High school really was hell. But would graduation bring redemption? Jake was already talking about going to the same college. That meant four years more of feeling as claustrophobic as she felt in the booth right now. And what could possibly come after, if not a marriage proposal? She was sixteen, but the time was anything but sweet as she visualized her steadily narrowing future choices.

The moon’s light sparkled outside, calling to her.

“I need to use the ladies’ room,” she said.

Jake, who had no way of knowing what she was thinking, got up and stood aside for her. He even smiled at her.

Diana looked straight ahead as she ran the gauntlet of gazes, some curious, some hostile. As she approached the cash register, which looked like another fifties relic, she turned left and headed for the restroom.

She relaxed a little the moment she moved out of sight. No one would expect her to reappear for another two or three minutes at least. Instead of heading into the ladies’ room, she turned around and walked as quietly as she could—straight toward the exit.

Someone was bound to hear the door open, hear the clatter of the bell. But the diner was busy right now. It was possible that neither Lorna nor any of Diana’s teenage acquaintances would look up in time to see her escape. That might give her a few minutes before Jake realized she was gone.

Perhaps Lorna was right, and Diana really was moon touched.

Or perhaps Diana was just a lunatic.

She quickened her pace as she neared the door, pulled it open, and dashed into the night.

She didn’t dare run across the parking lot. Jake might be looking out and see her fleeing. Instead, she traveled in a straight line, across the street, then into the nearest alleyway. She followed it to the end, where it connected to another alley that ran behind several businesses. She ran behind those buildings, thankful that she could no longer be seen from the diner.

But where could she go now? Home was within walking distance, but her parents would cross-examine her about why she was back so early. Besides, that would be the first place Jake would look for her.

Of course, he would find her sooner or later, and she would either have to break his heart or her own. Running away from home was impractical. What else could she possibly do?

She could keep running, but her breath was already coming in short, ragged breaths, and her calf muscles ached. At this rate, she could keep running, and Jake wouldn’t need his car to catch up to her. He could run after her and overtake her in minutes.

She cut back onto the street and began running down the sidewalk. Though it was dry, the moonlight somehow made it look silver.

Was there something wrong with her eyesight?

Going down a main street like this, particularly the street the diner was on, wasn’t a smart move. This was the direction Jake would drive when he came looking for her. The night was so bright that he could hardly miss her.

She glanced up, recalling that the October full moon was called Hunter’s Moon, and sometimes Dying Moon. Would it witness her being hunted down? Would it watch, unmoved, as her dreams died?

She blinked a couple of times. Did she see a beam of light, brighter than the rest, spearing down into the woods to the west? Surely, that had to be an optical illusion—but nothing about the moon was normal tonight. She turned onto the nearest cross street and headed west.

Not that such a move would do her that much good. Her leg muscles grew tighter with each step, and she could hardly breathe. She’d never make it to the woods. She wouldn’t even cover a quarter of the distance.

Just as Diana was about to give up, she started having what she was sure had to be a fatigue-induced hallucination. Her feet no longer touched the pavement. Instead, she glided above it. Rather than plodding more and more slowly, she was suddenly flying. Or perhaps her mind had snapped.

She closed her eyes and stopped running. But she still felt forward momentum. She opened them again and appeared to be, if not exactly flying, then at least floating rapidly.

“Moon touched,” Diana muttered to herself. “Moon touched.”

She felt numb. If she blinked and somehow found herself on the surface of the moon, she wouldn’t have been shocked. It was hardly a surprise when she found herself in a clearing somewhere deep in the woods.

This couldn’t be real. If she hadn’t completely lost her mind, she was asleep and dreaming. Almost as clearly as she could see the trees around her, ghostly in the moonlight, she could see herself in the diner, dozing next to Jake, who would gently wake her in a moment or two.

The wind whispering through the leaves chilled her, and the super moon continued to paint the world around her silver. If this was a dream, it was the most realistic she had ever experienced.

Her numbness gave way as fear nibbled at her innards. How many of the horror movie boxes had she already checked? She had left a crowded place and come to an isolated area all alone. She was already either overtired or downright crazy—easy prey for any psycho killer or creature of the night. If someone or something came upon her now, she would die, and the blood that poured from her gaping wounds would gleam silver in the light of the Dying Moon.

She shuddered and tried to push such morbid imaginings away. She also pledged to stop watching Teen Wolf reruns. But even as she had the thought, she wondered if being caught by a werewolf would be the worst thing. Maybe she would survive the attack and become a wolf herself. The pack might take her far away.

Far from Jake.

“There is no need for such desperate thoughts,” said a calm, controlled female voice, so unlike Diana’s own mood.

She looked over at a woman who seemed like a Greek statue come to life. She wore a short, white robe, single-shouldered and knee-length—the kind of chiton worn by Spartan women and runners. She also wore boots on her feet. On her back were strapped a bow and a quiver full of arrows. Only one character she’d ever read about looked like that.

“You’re Artemis?” Diana asked, realizing how stupid that sounded. “Or are you just something my mind conjured up?”

The goddess—if that’s what she was—shrugged.

“Does it matter?”

It mattered a great deal to Diana because the answer would determine whether she was sane or not. But instead of answering right away, she looked at the newcomer for some clue about her nature.

Artemis was as pale as Diana was—but standing in the moonlight, as they did now, the pallor looked more luminous than pasty.

“Either way, it seems you need my help.”

Artemis studied her as if Diana were some ancient treasure recovered from an archeological dig. “Only someone with Olympian blood could have called to me as loudly as you did. Your gray eyes remind me of Athena, but she had no children, so the eye color must be coincidence. Given your affinity for moonlight, my best guess would be Selene. She had fifty daughters with Endymion alone, and he was far from being her only mortal lover.

“In any case, I was once a protector of young girls who didn’t want to be forced into marriage. Join my hunting band. No man would dare try to claim you then.”

Diana felt an odd impulse to defend Jake. “He isn’t trying to force me.”

Artemis’s expression softened a little. “I know, or he would have tasted my wrath already. But you feel forced. That is enough. You need not be with a man if you do not desire it.”

The goddess reached toward Diana. “Do you wish to come or not? Time is short.”

Diana stepped forward slowly and took the offered hand. Artemis’s fingers entwined with hers. No male could rip her from that implacable grasp.

Jake shot like an arrow into the clearing. He had miraculously caught up. He glowed gold against the moonlight, prepared to battle against Olympus itself to “save” her.

As Artemis whisked her away, Diana realized for the first time what she and Jake had in common.