I Have Disappeared Into The Night

My mother left us the night the moon disappeared. She died in her sleep. We still don’t know why. I went to wake her to show her the suddenly moonless sky, and she was gone. Cold and rigid where just hours before she had been warm and alive. 

We buried her that night in the dark. The only light was the lantern lit by my sister. We could have waited until morning, but none of us wanted to see her body in the daylight. It was still but a dream -- a dream the daylight would shatter. 

We thought nothing more of the moon until the end of the week during the Harvest Festival. 

The sun was just beginning to set in the sky. I had dressed in my finest attire: a cotton blue dress with cap sleeves and sandals adorned in rubies. The dress had been made by my mother. The sandals were a gift from my father. Both were gone now.

I was just beginning to pull my hair into a bun when Garrett ran into the room, breathless and still carrying the stench of the fields. “It’s ruined. All ruined!”

My hair fell from my grasp. I turned to face him, hands on my hips. “What are you talking about?”

He rested his hands on his knees and tried to catch his breath. Mileya walked up behind him with a glass of water. “Drink,” she said. “And then tell us what is wrong.”

Garrett slurped down the water and handed the glass back to our sister. “We began to harvest the crops this morning. Everything was going well. The wheat, the potatoes, the corn. It was all fine. We came back to the village for lunch, leaving what we’d harvested in the barns. Well, when we came back, it had all disappeared!”

“Disappeared?” Mileya exclaimed.

“Yes! It was all gone without a trace. It was too much for someone to steal. We couldn’t make sense of it. We went back out to the fields and the rest of the crops were ruined. The wheat was dead, the potatoes were rotten. Even the apples had fallen from the trees, soft in the middle. Every remaining field was like this. There’ll be no Harvest Festival because there is no harvest!”

“That doesn’t make sense,” I said. “Crops don’t just disappear and suddenly rot.” 

“Believe it, Anais,” Garrett said. “It’s the truth. I swear it on our dear mother’s grave. They’ve disappeared just as the moon has disappeared in the sky.”

“It has to be a coincidence,” I said. 

Mileya shook her head. “I don’t think so, sissy. What would mother say if she were here?”

“There’s no such thing as coincidence,” Garrett answered.

“Well, she’s not here. Is she?” I snapped. My siblings just stared open mouthed. “Look, I’ve gotta go. I’ll see you at the Festival.”

“There is no Festival,” Garrett called out after me, but I shoved past him and Mileya and left the house. 

I knew this was a bad situation to be in. Without those crops, our village would starve. We wouldn’t make it through the winter. In that moment, I wanted nothing more than to have my mother back by my side. She would know what to do. But, maybe she wouldn’t. These were strange times full of disappearances. 

I kept walking for what seemed like hours. Past the village and into the forest. When I reached the end of the path, I kept walking. I didn’t know where I was going, but I felt something pulling me in that direction. It whispered to me I have all the answers you seek. 

After another hour of walking, the trees opened up to a clearing. Within the clearing sat a woman with dark skin and long, curly hair that obscured her face. I crept forward. “Hello?” 

The woman slowly lifted her head and stared at me. Her lips were a straight line. Unmoving. 

“Your mother is dead.” Her lips still did not move.

“Yes,” I answered. 

“You will be dead soon.”

“No.”

“Yes.” She blinked once. “When you run out of food, which will be soon.”

“Why did you bring me here?” There was no point in denying that she was the creature who had drawn me in. My feet were absolutely aching. I couldn’t feel them before, but now I was in utter pain. I collapsed at the edge of the clearing and looked up.

Night had fallen. Stars twinkled in the sky, but the moon was nowhere to be seen. It would have been utterly dark save for the light that emanated from the strange woman. It was a soft glow, almost like the moon.

“It was you,” I said. “You took the moon.”

“Correct.”

“But why?”

The woman bowed her head again, but continued to speak. “You mortals never appreciated the life you had been given. Only she knew the true cost. And now she is dead.” 

“My mother.”

“Long ago, she made the sacrifice necessary to save your lives, and she did it without question.”

“To save our lives?”

“My darling, what do you think I will take from you next? It will only get worse from here.” 

I began to think. She could have been bluffing. My mother would never make a deal with this..creature. 

“Do you need proof? Are you weaker than her?”

“Give me a reason why I shouldn’t walk out of this clearing right now. I don’t believe you.”

She lifted her head and her lips turned up in a smile. Slowly, she raised her arm until the necklace was visible dangling from her hand. I gasped and my body began to shake as recognition flowed over me. 

“She wouldn’t,” I said.

“But she did.”

The creature held the necklace my father wore every day of his life, up until the day he walked into the forest and never returned. 

My mother lost the love of her life in order to save her children and our entire village, but she wasn’t the only one who lost someone that day. My siblings and I lost our father. I had already sacrificed for the people of my village. 

My mother loved my father something fierce. She never would have sacrificed him unless the threat was real. 

“Do you believe now? Or do I need to show you what I plan to take from your people next?”

“Why do you do this? What is the point?”

A low chuckle sounded through the clearing. “I do it because I can. Without you, there would be no fun. Now, which of your siblings will you condemn to death?”

“Neither.” A single tear slipped down my cheek. “Take me. Take the life I could have had, the person I could have been.” 

As I stared down at the knife that would end my life, I thought of Garrett and Mileya. They would never know what had happened to me. I would have disappeared into the night like everyone else in their life. But they will be alive, and that is all I can ask for.