Moods of the Moon

Trigger Warning - contains mention of suicide and child loss.

The moon is even moodier than me – and I’m a moody person. I always have been, like it or not. Our natural nightlight waxes and wanes and sometimes, I forget that it’s even there, but it’s always changing. I notice it most when it’s round and full, like a ball of white fury suspended in the sky. Strange things happen on a full moon – as legend tells us, but I’d never witnessed any of it until that curious night. I was outside, in the middle of a forest, camping for the first time. It’s something I avoided until the age of thirty-five – not by active avoidance – but it was still something I’d never tried.

I was at a makeshift campsite. None of us really knew what we were doing, and our outdoor survival skills were questionable, to put it kindly. We pitched a tent, unsure of whether it would hold up for the evening, and we lit a campfire, hoping it wouldn’t spread beyond our small firepit. When things like that go well, I think it comes down to luck more than skill. I’ve always been more of a bookish type than an outdoor adventurer, but that night awoke a longing for the forest that has never left me.

We were sitting around a campfire, warming our bodies and the milk for our hot chocolate. The crackle of crisping marshmallows was loud in the soundless wood. A few rustles made themselves heard, but the wildlife was shy that evening. We hadn’t seen anything living – to my relief. But the things that come out after dark don’t always have to be living to find motion. I felt something glazing my fingertips, like the light touch of a loved one – gentle but undeniable. I retracted my hand from the fireside and scanning it for bugs. There wasn’t anything there, but then the dancer took my hand. She twirled around the fire pit, pulling me into her ritualistic dance. I didn’t know what it signified, but I wasn’t asked about that – I was just initiated into the practice. Whenever I looked at my companions, they were all still seated and none of them appeared to notice my movements. The figures that moved me were flimsy despite their defined movements. Their spirits felt stronger than their bodies – like ethereal angels pulling me into an unwanted waltz. It wasn’t a dance I felt comfortable doing. I’m not opposed to a dance in the right conditions – but I need a catchy song and a dark club – somewhere I wouldn’t be recognised in daylight. In that strange patch of forest, I felt at my most visible in the darkest of spaces.

I didn’t know why we were doing it, but my body was compelled to follow. I’d heard of strange stories being written in dark forests – many of them impromptu scripts composed aloud for the entertainment of friends. I liked feeling spooked by stories. I’d always liked the thrill of a horror story, or of the most unexpected of surprises. But there was something different about being an active participant in a ghostly story. I could hear the music growing in volume, but it had to be my imagination. None of us had a device with us, and the songs weren’t something I could have imagined hearing from anyone’s playlist. It was old and crackled like an undusted record. The tune was mournful and melancholy. The dances were too, when I thought about them. They weren’t energetic or animalistic; they were fluid and forlorn.

I could hear the dancers weeping, but no one else in our campsite seemed stirred by it. It was something only I could hear. I couldn’t explain any of it away with logic. Those are the types of stories that scare me the most. I listened to the gentle weeps of the ghosts. Those were the only things I could compare them to – with their translucent skin and their faded appearances. They chanted together and began to sing a song of their own. It was the saddest thing I had ever heard. They sang to the moon like they were begging it for their lives back – whispered messages between themselves and the wind. I’ve always been an empath – sensitive to the feelings of others – but this was something else entirely – it was something from the spiritual realm.

And then I heard their pleas – they wanted us to move from their home. They were stuck there in the afterlife – a limbo of their own making. We were trespassing on their sacred space. I found my human voice again and told everyone to leave, or something bad was going to happen – like it had happened to those women – their spirits were dancing and singing on, centuries later, trying to relieve themselves of what had happened – a suicide squad on that shared soil.

They’d banded together to comfort each other, having each lost a child, but they had only unearthed the tangled roots of their own grief. They’d spent so much time together in that one spot. The energy was palpable – at least to me. My companions still laughed over the campfire, cracking empty jokes that felt irreverent. I was in a hurry to get us out of there, but I was just the loon of the group – the dancer that swayed with the spirits. I packed up my belongings, rapidly – dumping a bucket of water to dampen the flames of our fire.

Everyone looked at me with deep suspicion – friends I’d had for years that I had never really opened up to – not like those poor women had to each other. I was desperate to leave their land untouched – to stop polluting it with our profanity and our waste. I knew I was talking gibberish. How do you explain an occurrence like that to people that have never experienced anything like it? I’d always been an unswayable atheist – and I’d denied spirituality at every turn, but I was enchanted by it then. We left the forest, and I slurred something about having spotted a bear, by way of explanation. We were in the Canadian wilderness – a bear wasn’t something too fantastic to consider; much less fantastic than what I had really seen.

When we got back to civilisation – to the artificial city lights, the man-made bridges, the things that rooted us in our concrete quarters – I felt like I’d lost something special. The relief I should have felt was replaced with an insatiable curiosity. I knew then that my thirst for the mysteries of the forest would never be sated. It wasn’t somewhere I thought I could return to en masse. I had to see what there was to find there alone. And so, I braved it – but I never saw a single thing I could liken to that night. Then again, I haven’t been back on a full moon. When it’s ripe and ready, maybe I’ll go back and see what it births for me.