in parentheses

Jay McKenzie’s work appears in publications, including Unleash Lit and Cerasus. Winner of the Exeter Short Story Prize, Fabula Aestas, Writers Playground and Furious Fiction, she was shortlisted for the 2022 Exeter Novel Prize and the 2023 Commonwealth Short Story Prize. Her debut novel comes in September 2023 with Serenade Publishing.

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The Moon and the Maid

Tonight, pewter bleeds into an arrogant bronze.

I worship the sky with unholy fervour.  Moon rituals are observed with strict adherence: Dyēus, Zojz, Hesperides; my guides, my leaders. Dawns set my pulse racing, but violet-soaked sunsets can bring me to my knees.

Love me, he screams tonight. Revere me. And I do. A fat white moon, pearly and innocent as the communion wafers that melted on my tongue, locks the colours together. A maelstrom of clouds rolls across the vista. It reminds me of the time we watched the lava spewing from the lip of Gunung Merapi, hands resting on the crumbling knees of a silent Buddha.

I turn to Himat, to ask him if he remembers, but his face is as impenetrable as those stone Gods. Where did we go? I wonder. Aren’t we under the same sky?

He is unlocking the car with the same mechanical motions he applies to everything these days: dressing, breakfast, sex; while pretending that I didn’t say that I wanted to walk home instead.  Instead of climbing into the car to choke on our stilted conversation. 

“Claudy?”

I sigh and slide in beside him.

#

His face is boyish in repose. I marvel at the youth of his skin in the silvery beam of moonlight illuminating his cheeks, his spidery lashes. You are beautiful, I think, but cold as an extinguishing star: gone already, just the tail end of your light still reaching us here on Earth.

I slip from the bed with a whisper: a faint gasp as my toes make contact with the air-conditioner cooled marble.  I can navigate to the roof in the dark, but tonight the moon guides me out of the bedroom, across the hall, out through the maid’s yard and up, up, up the rusting fire escape ladder. 

On the roof, I lay my pocketful of crystals in a circle around me. Citrine for vitality; tourmaline to balance the chakras; calcite for removing pain. And then rose quartz.

For love.

I used this to summon Himat into my life once. Before the debt of sharing secrets, before the crushing rigours of promotion and career progression. Before the babies that weren’t.

I cup the last stone in my palm, closing my eyes for a moment to energise it.

Moonstone.

I place it on the floor, completing the circle, close to where I intend to lay my head. The pearlescent moonlight picks out the milky glow of the stones. I centre myself in the circle of gems, lie at their heart, the still-warm concrete pressing into my skin through the linen of my nightdress.

Moonbathing. If Himat knew how much time I spend beneath the night sky, suspended between the gutter and the stars, envisioning different realities for us… I exhale, push him from my mind. Now, there is only me and the crystals: the moon, the sky. 

“Hello.”

The voice is soft, softer than a sleeping baby’s breath. I blink, turn my head. 

Under a luminous spotlight stands a figure. It is hard to tell at first if it is male or female, as crystalline white locks flow from the temple to the shoulders, loose iridescent fabric licking softly at the ankles.

I sit. “Hello?”

Lean shoulders, a bare male torso, pale and sparkling as fresh snow. He has a delicate chin and a prominent cupid’s bow on his lips. He dips his head towards his chest, gazes up at me through obsidian eyes. 

“I have come,” he says simply.

The fabric of his lungi makes a gentle fssh as he walks towards me. I scramble to my feet.

“I…I don’t know you.”

He smiles, stops walking.

“You know me. You love me.” He extends his fingers toward me, the other hand resting on a string of glowing moonstone looped around his neck.

“I’ve never met you,” I say, but instantly, I know that I am lying. The longer I look at him, the more familiar he becomes. It spreads from my belly to my feet, this realisation. “You are the sky.”

He bows. “Indeed. Some call me Savitṛ. I would be honoured if you would.”

Heat rises in my cheeks. The skin on my arms, my torso, prickles, as though charged through with electricity. “You heard me,” I whisper.

Savitṛ says nothing, simply beckons me with his long, pale fingers. I step from my stone circle – I have to – and go to him. His palm is cool in mine. Our hands meet, and a plume of vapour rises from between them.

“You have called me,” he says, “and your devotion is beautiful. At my side, you will be the breeze, a storm, a hurricane. You will cool desperate brows with a tender breath, tear apart those who seek to hurt us with your rage.”

He lays a hand across my belly and I’m pulled upwards like a thrashing, greedy wave. The roar fills my ears, my mouth, my lungs and I grip, grip his fingers in mine. My skin tingles, until I am flesh no more.

I am not afraid.

#

Himat wakes to the rumble of the storm. He shudders. Here, the sky can break without warning; tear itself apart with the belching roar of thunder, the seared scars of electricity, and it frightens him.

He places his hand beside him in the bed and frowns. The sheets beneath his fingers are warm, as though a body has recently vacated them. He shakes his head. For a moment, he wonders what it would feel like to curl up to the warm skin of a lover again. It has been too long, he thinks. Tomorrow, he will join his work mates for drinks at the bar, see if he can meet a nice woman.

For now though, he wants to sleep. The thunder lulls him like the gentle growl of Gunung Merapi erupting that time, his hand resting on a stone Buddha. As sleep takes him, he thinks, was there another hand resting there by mine?

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