"O, swear not by the moon"

My eyes, straining in the dark, darted from the outermost point of the faintly glimmering Big Dipper in a straight line to Polaris—the North Star. I had lost sight of her as a blanket of grey clouds shrouded what had been a clear night sky, but, when I found her again, I relaxed my tense muscles and let out a breath I hadn’t realized I was holding.

“Don’t fail me know,” I whispered, eyes turned upward to follow where the blinking star pointed her rays; heaven-bound eyes that deliberately didn’t look at the vast desert wasteland that, down here, were closing in on all four sides.

I had been walking for days, traveling only after nightfall, when the Sun, replaced by the gentler, more forgiving sister, Moon, finally relaxed his harsh rays. The Moon allowed me passage through the desert unharmed and without the blistered skin and burning thirst that her brother demanded as a toll. Thank God for the Moon, who chased the Sun through the sky, and, when he had fled, bowed her head with a crescent smile and bade me go: Take heart, traveller, and I will light thee on thy way!

It was by some strange perverseness that, when the Sun, whom I hated, had disappeared, that I cursed my lamp-bearer and her guiding stars, like so many specks of dust spilt across the sky, and longed for his warmth and comforting glow. The Moon, though kind, was cold and her shine, though it struggled through time and space to light me on my way, was but a mere reflection of her brother’s stronger, purer light. I sometimes thought she must heed my ungratefulness; waxing and waning to suit her mood, and mine. At times teasing me with only a sliver of light to guide my footsteps, but, when I grew sick with pining, she returned in all her glory; a white hole carved out of ebony expanse: the light at the end of the tunnel.

 I trudged northward, feet sinking in the soft sands, which gripped at my heels and tried to pull me down when all I wanted was to soar upward toward the stars that had been my only companion these past nights. But even I had to admit that the rolling dunes looked almost plush; I could imagine laying down in one and slowly sinking into the warm, dry, suffocating depths where I could lay forever undisturbed.

I shuddered at the thought, suddenly conscious of my weakening will and fearful of my own mind, which had been sorely tested since crossing into the desert, where I had lost count of the bleached piles of bones that wound their way through the wasteland like breadcrumbs. Yes, it had been a long and difficult journey from my native village in Nandaar to the endless rolling desert of the Leem, I thought. My mother, whom I had never seen cry, had sobbed pathetically when the village Don had pronounced his verdict in so many words, shaking his head sadly: “Few have lived to see the northern border of Leem.”

With a leathern sac, a weeks’ worth of bread, and no map but the stars, I carried out my penance, head bowed against the wind and feet directed to the north, trudging steadily on.

I didn’t know what I would find when the desert ran out; the villagers whom I had asked had merely sighed and wished me safe travels with little hope in their words or in their eyes; “It is a long journey, and a harsh one. God attend you.”

Only one man from my village had gone before me, and I remembered watching his departure as a child. No crowds gathered for him as they had for me, for he was old and unmarried and his crime was murder. Many believed he deserved to undergo the Trial; a cleansing could only do him good, and if a murderer was unlikely to survive, so what? But me? A young woman in her prime, a petty thief, to face such horrors… I shuddered as I wondered what awaited me at the border.

As if sensing my mood, the moon and stars twinkled brighter, extending their energy into my weary limbs. I absorbed the light and took heart at the thought that I had made it this far, and, if I could see it through, not only could I return home with my name vindicated and my conscience clear, but I would be a legend.

It was not a hundred more steps before the atmosphere began to change. The dunes seemed to shift and wobble in the windless night. Something is coming. Every hair on my body stood on end as the adrenaline began to course through my veins. Fight. That was always my response. As the air seemed thicken and compress around me, I braced myself for whatever was about to burst forth over the horizon or explode from the very sand beneath my feet.

I squinted my eyes, attempting to see into the distance, where a speck on the horizon was growing larger by the second. I implored the stars to strengthen their flame, but they, too, seemed to be holding their breath, waiting for what was to come. Instinctively, I felt that I had reached my destination. Or, rather, I thought, unable to tear my eyes from the approaching blot that was gradually taking on the shape of a woman, it had reached me.

It was no use yelling out; my voice was caught in my throat. And that, that thing, which couldn’t possibly be a woman, unless one that flew over the sand with her feet never brushing the ground. It was coming far too fast to be any human agency, I thought, with a growing terror in my breast.

And then it was there. In front of me.

“Mom?” I said staring into a familiar pair of eyes with what must have been an expression of almost comical surprise. Nothing made sense.

“I’m not your mother,” she (It?) said. I would have known anyway, by the hollow-sounding voice that seemed to echo from somewhere far, far away. It was not, by any stretch of the imagination, the warm, jovial, sometimes too-loud tone of my mother’s voice. Even in my weakened and desperate state, even though the sight, a mere mirage of my mother, had sent a wave of relief through my body, and I wanted to fall down at her feet and cry “TAKE ME HOME,” I could not convince myself that this was a person I knew. Or, indeed, even a person at all.

I asked the obvious question: “Who are you?” There was no answer that could have surprised me just then. I merely waited for instruction, like a petulant child, oppressed by fatigue and anxiety and fear.

The figure answered, “I am the End,” and pointed to a demarcation line in the sand. Beyond was pitch black.

“I don’t understand,” I said, but my throat was dry and my voice sounded weak.

“You can take the final steps and complete your journey, or you can turn around and repeat the trial. What is your choice?”

So this was it, then; this was the Cleansing. A mere suicide mission. I had reached the end expecting a revelation, but was met with darkness and a choice that was barely a choice. Could I endure a repetition; could I immediately turn around and repeat the horrors of lonely, exhausting, painful journey knowing that all that awaited me was a return to the mundane existence that had put me on this path in the first place? I had turned to petty crime to relieve the boredom of my days, and it had sent me to the gallows; I wondered if mine was a life worth retrieving with the silence and rest of the void opened its welcoming arms just steps away. I was so tired.

I looked around, searching for an answer in the sand at my feet, in the stars above my head, but they, too, has forsaken me, giving way to the harsh reminder of a new dawn; another day, another night… it was only prolonging the inevitable. I understood now why no one had ever returned, no sentence had ever been commuted.

I looked up at the fading moon and imagined myself frozen in time, bookended between too mothers: the one who stood before me guiding me towards death and the one who, hopefully watching the horizon, many miles behind, had given me life. I took a deep breath, said goodbye to the wavering moon, and took my one-millionth step, South, towards life.