Copyright © 2008 Greg Brostrom. All rights reserved. 

Do you hear, child? The chilt is round. The chilt is round like the moon and the dome of the sky. The chilt was made by the man, so he would have a place to keep his women. Do you hear? The moon is round. The moon is round and unchanging like the earth and the dome of the chilt. The sky was made by the moon, so he would have a place to keep his secret. Do you see, child? He is high. He is unreachable. The man says, when he comes to the chilt, that he will bring down the moon to you. He lies, but he also tells the truth. You will understand. Long ago, the moon was closer. He was a friend to men and women. But one day we noticed the moon was higher than it once was. We tried to talk to the moon in pictures, to ask questions without words, to plead with him in silence. We built our chilti and our chiltasqa in his favorite shape, to show how much we missed him. The perfect roundness of his favorite shape. Do you see? He used to have many shapes, child. One like a bow, one like a smile, one like a khalfa and one like your little clay bowl that cannot keep its form. He stays round now, cruel and constant. We do not know why this is so. Maybe he tired of being touched, maybe he was eaten once too often. What child? Oh, yes! Such a flavor! Different to each man, woman and child! We ate the moon as if there were no other food in the world. We were so happy, and the moon was never diminished. Do you see, child? One day he simply left. And we mourned his loss and became afraid. We moved into our chilti to flee the growing dark of the world. Oh, I beg you child, do not reach for him so! You can want to reach him all you wish. You can wish to reach him all you want. But you will always stay in this chilt with me, looking up through the holtis at the moon, wishing you could taste him just once. But you must stop wishing, child, stop looking. He will always be out of reach, just like the man. The man built us this chilt but no door. The man comes back, but only to see if we still breathe, and to drop food through the holtis. The man is sad. I think when the moon left, the men found even more sadness than the women. The man protects us from the moon’s secret. No, he does not wish to keep what is good from us, he only desires to keep us from pain. No, I do not know the moon’s secret. I do not know, do not ask again, child! No, we cannot leave the chilt. For then we would learn the moon’s secret and share the man’s wandering despair. So many questions. Be quiet, child. Be still, child, and do not reach for the moon. Stay, child, and do not look so hard. The holtis will not grow wider with your staring. There is nothing to see but the moon. There is nothing else. Do you hear, child? Only the distant, silent, and cold moon. And the man’s hand. And the moon.

The woman stopped talking as she drifted off to sleep, and the child glared at the woman. The child did not believe there was only the moon, she only knew what the woman said, and she wanted to know for herself. She needed a new story. The child ran her hand up the curved wall of the chilt, feeling her fingers bump and jump over the smooth, round branches. On tiptoe, she could nearly reach the edge of the tiny holtis. The child’s face twisted and she began her story. The moon is all she can see through the holtis eye. And she cannot reach the moon. Yet. But she will. She will grow enough to reach the sky and taste the moon. She will laugh at the man and at the other man who one day will come for her. He will break down the chilt and kill the woman and try to take the child to a far away chiltasqa and make her be a woman. But she will laugh and say, You cannot touch me. You cannot take me. You cannot teach me. I know the moon’s secret and more besides, for I have reached the moon and tasted him, but you cannot taste me. The woman never spoke of another man, but the child believed the story she told herself. She believed with every shuddering breath. The child’s face is sudden, terrible, and radiant as she spins the new legend. She must reach and taste the moon before the story can come true, before her poen ends. If the other man comes before she reaches the moon, she will die without a taste. Being one with the man, she will die alone.

Time passed. Each day, the child grew. Each day, the man’s hand appeared above and dropped food. He spoke to the woman in words the child did not know. Each day, the woman watched her grow and grow and grow and grow, until one day the woman’s weeping started. When the child saw the woman’s tears, she thought the woman had been weeping forever, though she knew this could not be true. Each day, the woman lost more of herself, her poen, to the ground. The child knew she must reach the moon very soon, if she was ever going to taste it for herself. Her hand could now reach out of the chilt, past the circled branch of the holtis, and her heart said she could almost feel the moon’s light, feel its cool soft edge. Surely the moon itself was not far beyond that chilled sweetness. Her breath quickened each time she stretched out her hand, thinking this time must be the time. Each day, she reached. Each day, she failed. Each day, she watched herself grow as passionately as the woman, but it was a passion born of hope and joy, rather than despair and death. The woman’s poen poured out in her tears, and she waned. The child’s stretching mind and body increased her poen, and she waxed.

One day, as the woman slept with tears still stealing from her eyes, the child lay down to think. She had not reached through the holtis in three days, for the man with his food had not appeared, and she was hungry and afraid. The woman had taken to drinking her own tears, but this only hastened the steady withering that had already reduced her to half the child’s size. The child curled on the floor after another hungry day and gazed up and out at the moon. The moon hung just out of reach above the chilt. As always. Her eyelids began to dip and play with a life of their own as the moon swelled and sighed with rhythmic breath, and her thoughts wandered. Perhaps tomorrow she will reach the moon. Why does the man not bring food? The moon never moves after all, he just waits for her to finally grow and reach and grip and taste. How does he know they are still breathing? It cannot be long before she presses his face in her palm. He has never failed to come before now. Oh, and then what he must taste like, just think, child! Perhaps he cannot come back. He will taste like no meat or root or bark ever could, for he will be full of the flavors of the sky. He must not be able to come back. He must not be able to come back. He is not coming back!

The child lunged upright, eyes wide, throat pulsing, lean stomach muscles thrumming. Her gaze darted about the dark interior of the chilt, and came to rest, as it always did, upon the moonbeam pillar in the center of the floor. What was that horrible thought? He is not coming back! Her mind screamed in panic, and she screamed back, Quiet, child, you restless basca! Think, don’t forget the sound of your poen! Her breathing slowed as her mind began to work. There must always be a man. What was that, child? There must always be a man. The thought was new, but was as instantly true and real to her as the chilt in which her entire life has passed. The man is not coming back, and there must always be a man. The child knew the time she feared had come. Her story was true. The other man was coming, for there must always be a man. A man who will take her to a new chilt, a chilt that is not her home. She must reach the moon now, tonight, before it is too late. Hurry, child! Before the other man steals you from the woman and the other woman steals you from yourself. The other woman is you, child. Beware! Reach! Careful! Quick!

She raised herself to a crouch, eyes burning and fixed on the moon that shone down through the holtis. As she moved to the center of the chilt, the moon suddenly and clearly dropped a hand-span toward the chilt. The child froze. Her breath stopped. Her slim figure, tense and coiled, was captured in the glow of the moonbeam. The light spilt into the hollows of her upturned face, into her mouth, across her curved back and naked thighs. Her belly, throat, arms, and broad, calloused feet hid in gloom. Her hair grew from her head in silver cords, then dropped into darkness as it trailed past her face, down her arms, over her darkened hands, and spread like a shadow between the arches of her feet. Her mind flickered, half in light, half in darkness, full of hope and fear of hope. The moon is closer. The moon is closer! She did not know how or why, but what did it matter? The moon is closer! Who knew how long it would remain this low, lower than in memory! Now. Or never. Her legs flexed and slowly began their uncoiling, her toes clenching grooves in the dirt, but she dared not breathe. She was hunting the moon, and she moved as cautiously as she knew how, so as not to frighten the moon back up into the intangible sky. She reached her right arm over her head and began snaking her fingers through the holtis. Her spine uncurled upward. The child was now too tall to stand upright in the chilt, and her head and neck were forced downward, crushed painfully against the roof. Her hand and the rest of her arm emerged through the holtis slow and stealthy. Her shoulder ached as she pressed as much of herself as she could through the tiny opening. She stopped, waiting. She was ready. She squeezed her eyes shut and whispered. She whispered to her arm. She whispered to the chilt. She whispered to the moon. She whispered to the woman. She whispered to the chiltasqa and to her poen and to the sky. She whispered,

Now. The child exhales a blast of held air and slams her arm upward and arches her back and points her hand into a blade that will cut a piece of the moon for her to place on her tongue and savor as it slides down her throat and warms her body which is always cold and she will never need another bite of the man’s food and she will never leave the chilt never leave the woman and only know the moon now now now nownownownownownowNOWNOWNOWNOWNOW ... Everything stops. Her eyes snap open, but all she can see is the brown dirt of the floor. A hot breath claws down her throat in a harsh gasp. Her fingers are touching something. It is round and cool and smooth. Oh, child, it is the moon! She can feel its disk curving up and away from her hand. She can feel its light leaking beneath her nails and into her palm. Its cool warmth slips down her arm and into her shoulder and throughout her poen. The child is crying with the pain of happiness as her own body begins to illuminate the interior of the chilt. She sees the branches of the walls bathed in silver, sees her footprints as hills and valleys in the floor, sees the woman’s shadow lying on the wall and it lies so still, sees the qatca beetle humming in the air and for the first time sees the delicate veins in its clear wings, sees her entire life drenched in light. Her poen aches with the glee of discovery and the sorrow of ignorance. She gasps and sobs and dribbles from her nose and laughs and grips the moon tightly between her thumb and forefinger, gathering herself to draw it down to where she can actually taste of it.

In this moment, into her joy, the other man comes. He sees what men always see when they come for a woman-child. An arm, reaching through the roof of the chilt, extending hundreds of thousands of man-heights into the sky, wavers with the breeze. A long, slender arm, gleaming with its own moonlight, and an enormous hand gripping the moon with five delicate fingers. The arm's grace and fragile beauty nearly stop him from claiming the ripened prize. But no. If he does not pluck this child another will make her a woman in his stead. Fear and desire spur him forward. He lunges, mouth terribly in a silent scream of pain and triumph, and kicks his foot through the chilt. The wall collapses, its structure weakened without the man’s constant care. The other man rips the dome apart with his bare hands, looks down, and with a spasm of regretful fury stomps down on the woman’s neck. The bones crackle as its breaks like the brittle branch wall. She was already gone, they always were. But many things are required of men that do not speak well with their poen. Like what he must do next. He grabs the child around her waist and leaps towards his chiltasqa, far away on a distant plateau. He must be gone before the men roaming this mesa find him. It is an elaborate dance, a deadly race, but he finds his way with no difficulty, because the moon has a secret. All men and women know the secret and keep the secret. The man looks up and sees many moons.

Thousands of them, millions, separated from each other by their own narrow ring of black sky. Brilliant in their diversity, shining down with every color known and many not named, visible through the sparse wisps of cloud, there are too many moons. That is the secret. As the woman said, once there had been only one moon, and it had been tasted and shared by all. But then one day there was another. Then another and another. More and more as the men and women grew more and more numerous. Then one day, they were simply out of reach. Of course, there were the stories of certain men and even a few escaped women somehow reaching a moon and swallowing it whole. But those adventurers simply swelled round-bellied with their feast and bobbed up to replace the eaten moon. Who knew how many of the uncountable moons were once hungry, desperate travelers?

Yes, things were simpler now, and more confused, the man thinks as he flies across the shining landscape toward his carefully constructed chilt, at the center of his chiltasqa. The walls were his, but the woman will complete the holtis, her timeless duty. She will fashion it so one moon can be seen from inside, only one. Her pain will hide behind the mud and the sticks. She will have a child. She will teach the child and the man will feed it. Yes, this is our world, the man thinks as he flies. He grins as a tear slips from his eye and falls shining to the ground. A tiny, liquid moon. He leaps many hundreds of man-heights up and ahead with each thrusting bound, raising whirlwinds with each landing, skimming the cloud bellies at each peak, but never coming close to the moon.

The child-now-woman is carried under the man’s arm, bouncing and jerking with his gait, her silver eyes blinking at the sky. So many! Her mouth is a hard line, a bloodless wound. Her tears, at first flowing free with grief and pain and frustrated rage, are dry. The other man and the other woman have stolen her. The light is fading from her skin, and she already feels the other child inside her growing. A girl. A daughter who will never taste the moon. The sky is full of them. So many, too many. Hopeless. What reason could she possibly have had for reaching the moon, when the sky was overflowing with them? One moon can never satisfy. One is useless without the others, and no one can ever taste them all. She knows what she must do. She will break her already shattered heart and lie to her child. She will form stories and legends to fill her child’s mind, instead of this secret reality, this endless unattainability. She will prevent this heart-ripping knowledge, this lack of hope from reaching and tasting her child’s wonder. The child will not believe her of course, she will not understand, but at least she will not know the truth. The woman thinks about what she will say. She will say

Do you hear, child? The chilt is round. The chilt was made by the man, and the sky was made by the moon. Do you hear, child? The moon is round and unchanging. Do you see? Look through the holtis. There it is. The one and the only. Now look away. Do you see?