ELIZABETH HAND

LAST SUMMER AT MARS HILL

Even before they left home, Moony knew her mother wouldn't return from Mars
Hill
that year. Jason had called her from his father's house in San Francisco --

"I had a dream about you last night," he'd said, his voice cracking the way it
did when he was excited. "We were at Mars Hill, and my father was there, and
my
mother, too-- I knew it was a dream, like can you imagine my mother at Mars
Hill? -- and you had on this sort of long black dress and you were sitting
alone
by the pier. And you said, 'This is it, Jason. We'll never see this again.' I
felt like crying, I tried to hug you but my father pulled me back. And then I
woke up."

She didn't say anything. Finally Jason prodded her. "Weird, huh, Moony? I
mean,
don't you think it's weird?"

She shrugged and rolled her eyes, then sighed loudly so that he'd be able to
tell she was upset. "Thanks, Jason. Like that's supposed to cheer me up?"

A long silence, then Jason's breathless voice again. "Shit, Moony, I'm sorry.
I
didn't --"

She laughed, a little nervously, and said, "Forget it. So when you flying out
to
Maine?"

Nobody but Jason called her Moony, not at home at least, not in Kamensic
Village. There she was Maggie Rheining, which was the name that appeared under
her junior picture in the high school yearbook.

But the name that had been neatly typed on the birth certificate in San
Francisco sixteen years ago, the name Jason and everyone at Mars Hill knew her
by, was Shadowmoon Starlight Rising. Maggie would have shaved her head before
she'd admit her real name to anyone at school. At Mars Hill it wasn't so
weird:
there was Adele Grose, known professionally as Madame Olaf; Shasta Daisy
O'Hare
and Rvis Capricorn; Martin Dionysos, who was Jason's father; and Ariel Rising,
nee Amanda Mac Rheining, who was Moony's mother. For most of the year Moony
and
Ariel lived in Kamensic Village, the affluent New York exurb where her mother
ran Earthly Delights Catering and Moony attended high school, and everything
was
pretty much normal. It was only in June that they headed north to Maine, to
the
tiny spiritualist community where they had summered for as long as Moony could
remember. And even though she could have stayed in Kamensic with Ariel's
friends
the Loomises, at the last minute (and due in large part to Jason's urging, and
threats if she abandoned him there] she decided to go with her mother to Mars
Hill. Later, whenever she thought how close she'd come to not going, it made
her
feel sick: as though she'd missed a flight and later found out the plane had
crashed.

Because much as she loved it, Moony had always been a little ashamed of Mars
Hill. It was such a dinky place, plopped in the middle of nowhere on the rocky
Maine coast -- tiny shingle-style Carpenter Gothic cottages, all tumbled into
disrepair, their elaborate trim rotting and strong with spider-webs; poppies
and
lupines and tiger lilies sprawling bravely atop clumps of chickweed and
dandelions of truly monstrous size; even the sign by the pier so faded you
almost couldn't read the earnest lettering:

MARS HILL SPIRITUALIST COMMUNITY FOUNDED 1883

"Why doesn't your father take somebody's violet aura and repaint the damn sign
with it?" she'd exploded once to Jason.

Jason looked surprised. "I kind of like it like that," he said, shaking the
hair
from his face and tossing a sea urchin at the silvered board. "It looks like
it
was put up by our Founding Mothers." But for years Moony almost couldn't stand
to even look at the sign, it embarrassed her so much.

It was Jason who helped herget over that. They'd met when they were both
twelve.
It was the summer that Ariel started the workshop in Creative Psychokinesis,
the
first summer that Jason and his father had stayed at Mars Hill.

"Hey," Jason had said, too loudly, when they found themselves left alone while
the adults swapped wine coolers and introductions at the summer's first
barbecue. They were the only kids in sight. There were no other families and
few
conventionally married couples at Mars Hill. The community had been the cause
of
more than one custody battle that had ended with wistful children sent to
spend
the summer with a more respectable parent in Boston or Manhattan or Bar
Harbor.
"That lady there with my father --"

He stuck his thumb out to indicate Ariel, her long black hair frizzed and
bound
with leather thongs, an old multicolored skirt flapping around her legs. She
was
talking to a slender man with close-cropped blond hair and goatee, wearing a
sky-blue eartan and shabby Birkenstock sandals. "That your mom?"

"Yeah." Moony shrugged and glanced at the man in the cartan. He and Ariel both
turned to look at their children. The man grinned and raised his wine glass.
Ariel did a little pirouette and blew a kiss at Moony.

"Looks like she did too much of the brown acid at Woodstock," Jason announced,
and flopped onto the grass. Moony glared down at him.

"She wasn't at Woodstock, asshole," she said, and had started to walk away
when
the boy called after her.
"Hey -- it's a joke! My name's Jason --" He pointed at the man with Ariel.
"That's my father. Martin Dionysos. But like that's not his real name, okay?
His
real name is Schuster but he changed it, but I'm Jason Schuster. He's a
painter.
We don't know anyone here. I mean, does it ever get above forty degrees?"

He scrambled to his feet and looked at her beseechingly. Smaller even than
Moony
herself, so slender he should have looked younger than her, except that his
sharp face beneath floppy white-blond hair was always twisted into some ironic
pronouncement, his blue eyes always flickering somewhere between derision and
pleading.

"No," Moony said slowly. The part about Jason not changing his name got to
her.
She stared pointedly at his thin arms prickled with gooseflesh, the
fashionable
surfer-logo T-shirt that hung nearly to his knees. "You're gonna freeze your
skinny ass off here in Maine, Jason Schuster." And she grinned.

He was from San Francisco. His father was a well-known artist and a member of
the Raging Faery Queens, a gay pagan group that lived in the Bay Area and
staged
elaborately beautiful solstice gatherings and AIDS benefits. At Mars Hill,
Martin Dionysos gave workshops on strengthening your aura and on clear nights
led the community's men in chanting at the moon as it rose above Penobscot
Bay.
Jason was so diffident about his father and his father's work that Moony was
surprised, the single time she visited him on the West Coast, to find her
friend's room plastered with flyers advertising Faery gatherings and newspaper
photos of Martin and Jason at various ACT-HP events. In the fall Jason would
be
staying in Maine, while she returned to high school. Ultimately it was the
thought that she might not see him again that made Moony decide to spend this
last summer at Mars Hill.

"That's what you're wearing to First Night?"

Moony started at   her mother's voice, turned to see Ariel in the middle of the
summer cottage's   tiny living room. Wine rocked back and forth in her mother's
glass, gold shot   with tiny sunbursts from the crystals hung from every window.
"What about your   new dress?"

Moony   shrugged. She couldn't tell her mother about Jason's dream, about the
black   dress he'd seen her wearing. Ariel set great store by dreams, especially
these   last few months. What she'd make of one in which Moony appeared in a
black
dress   and Ariel didn't appear at all, Moony didn't want to know.

"Too hot," Moony said. She paused in front of the window and adjusted one of
three silver crosses dangling from her right ear. "Plus I don't want to
upstage
you."

Ariel smiled. "Smart kid," she said, and took another sip of her wine.

Ariel wore what she wore to every First Night: an ankle-length patchwork skirt
so worn and frayed it could only be taken out once a year, on this ceremonial
occasion. Squares of velvet and threadbare satin were emblazoned with suns and
moons and astrological symbols, each one with a date neatly embroidered in
crimson thread.

Sedona, Aug 15, 1972. Mystery Hill, NH, 5/80. The Winter Garden 1969. Jajouka,
Tangiers, Marrakech 1968.

Along the bottom, where many of the original squares had disintegrated into
fine
webs of denim and chambray, she had begun piecing a new section: squares that
each held a pair of dates, a name, an embroidered flower. These were for
friends
who had died. Some of them were people lost two decades earlier, to the War,
or
drugs or misadventure; names that Moony knew only from stories told year after
year at Mars Hill or in the kitchen at home.

But most of the names were those of people Moony herself had known. Friends of
Ariel's who had gathered during the divorce, and again, later, when Moony's
father died, and during the myriad affairs and breakups that followed. Men and
women who had started out as Ariel's customers and ended as family. Uncle Bob
and Uncle Raymond and Uncle Nigel. Laurie Salas. Tommy McElroy and Scan
Jacobson. Chas Bowen and Martina Glass. And, on the very bottom edge of the
skirt, a square still peacock-bright with its blood-colored rose, crimson
letters spelling out John's name and a date the previous spring.

As a child Moony had loved that skirt. She loved to watch her mother sashay
into
the tiny gazebo at Mars Hill on First Night and see all the others laugh and
run
to her, their fingers plucking at the patchwork folds as though to read
something there, tomorrow's weather perhaps, or the names of suitors yet
unmet.

But now Moony hated the skirt. It was morbid, even Jason agreed with that.

"They've already got a fucking quilt," he said, bitterly. "We don't need your
more wearing a goddamn skirt."

Moony nodded, miserable, and tried not to think of what they were most afraid
of: Martin's name there beside John's, and a little rosebud done in
flower-knots. Martin's name, or Ariel's.

There was a key to the skirt, Moony thought as she watched her mother sip her
wine; a way to decode all the arcane symbols Ariel had stitched there over the
last few months. It lay in a heavy manila envelope somewhere in Ariel's room,
an
envelope that Ariel had started carrying with her in February, and which grew
heavier and heavier as the weeks passed. Moony knew there was something
horrible
in that envelope, something to do with the countless appointments Ariel had
since February, with the whispered phone calls and macrobiotic diets and the
resurgence of her mother's belief in devas and earth spirits and plain
old-fashioned ghosts.

But Moony said nothing of this, only smiled and fidgeted with her earrings.
"Go
ahead," she told Ariel, who had settled at the edge of a wicker hassock and
peered up at her daughter through her wineglass. "I just got to get some
stuff."
Ariel waited in silence, then drained her glass and set it on the floor.
"Okay.
Jason and Martin are here. I saw them on the hill --"

"Yeah. I know, I talked to them, they went to Camden for lunch, they can't
wait
to see you." Moony paced to the door to her room, trying not to look
impatient.
Already her heart was pounding.

"Okay," Ariel said again. She sounded breathless and a little drunk. She had
ringed her aquamarine eyes with kohl, to hide how tired she was. Over the last
few months she'd grown so thin that her cheekbones had emerged again, after
years of hiding in her round peasant's face. Her voice was hoarse as she
asked,
"So you'll be there soon?"

Moony nodded. She curled a long tendril of hair, dark as her mother's but
finer,
and brushed her cheek with it. "I'm just gonna pull my hair back. Jason'll
give
me shit if I don't."

Ariel laughed. Jason thought that they were all a bunch of hippies. "Okay."
She
crossed the room unsteadily, touching the backs of chairs, a windows ill, the
edge of a buoy hanging from the wall. When the screen door banged shut behind
her Moony sighed with relief.

For a few minutes she waited, to make sure her mother hadn't forgotten
something, like maybe a joint or another glass of wine. She could see out the
window to where people were starting downhill toward the gazebo. If you didn't
look too closely, they might have been any group of summer people gathering
for
a party in the long northern afternoon.

But after a minute or two their oddities started to show. You saw them for
what
they really were: men and women just getting used to a peculiar middle age.
They
all had hair a little too long or too short, a little too gray or garishly
colored. The women, like Ariel, wrapped in clothes like banners from a
triumphant campaign now forgotten. Velvet tunics threaded with silver,
miniskirts crossing pale bare blue-veined thighs, Pucci blouses back in vogue
again. The men more subdued, in chinos some of them, or old jeans that were a
little too bright and neatly pressed. She could see Martin beneath the lilacs
by
the gazebo, in baggy psychedelic shorts and T-shirt, his gray-blond hair
longer
than it had been and pulled back into a wispy ponytail. Beside him Jason
leaned
against a tree, self-consciously casual, smoking a cigarette as he watched the
First Night promenade. At sight of Ariel he raised one hand in a lazy wave.

And now the last two stragglers reached the bottom of the hill. Mrs. Grose
carrying her familiar, an arthritic wheezing pug named Milton: Ancient Mrs.
Grose, who smelled of Sen-sen and whiskey, and prided herself on being one of
the spiritualists exposed as a fraud by Houdini. And Gary Bonetti, who (the
story went) five years ago had seen a vision of his own death in the City, a
knife wielded by a crack-crazed kid in Washington Heights. Since then, he had
stayed on at Mars Hill with Mrs. Grose, the community's only other year-round
resident.

Moony ducked back from the window as her mother turned to stare up at the
cottage. She waited until Ariel looked away again, as Martin and Jason
beckoned
her toward the gazebo.

"Okay," Moony whispered. She took a step across the room and stopped. An
overwhelming smell of cigarette smoke suddenly filled the air, though there
was
no smoke to be seen. She coughed, waving her hand in front of her face.

"Damn it, Jason," she hissed beneath her breath. The smell was gone as
abruptly
as it had appeared. "I'll be right there --"

She slipped through the narrow hallway with its old silver-touched mirrors and
faded Maxfield Parrish prints, and went into Ariel's room. It still had its
beginning-of-summer smell, mothballs and the salt sweetness of rugosa roses
blooming at the beach's edge. The old chenille bedspread was rumpled where
Ariel
had lain upon it, exhausted by the flight from LaGuardia to Boston, from
Boston
via puddle jumper to the tiny airport at Green Turtle Reach. Moony pressed her
hand upon the spread and closed her eyes. She tried to focus as Jason had
taught
her, tried to dredge up the image of her mother stretched upon the bed. And
suddenly there it was, a faint sharp stab of pain in her left breast, like a
stitch in her side from running. She opened her eyes quickly, fighting the
dizziness and panicky feeling. Then she went to the bureau.

At home she had never been able to find the envelope. It was always hidden
away,
just as the mail was always carefully sorted, the messages on the answering
machine erased before she could get to them. But now it was as if Ariel had
finally given up on hiding. The envelope was in the middle drawer, a worn
cotton
camisole draped halfheartedly across it. Moony took it carefully from the
drawer
and went to the bed, sat and slowly fanned the papers out.

They were hospital bills. Hospital bills and Blue Cross forms, cash register
receipts for vitamins from the Waverly Drugstore with Ariel's crabbed script
across the top. The bills were for tests only, tests and consultation.'s.
Nothing for treatments; no receipts for medication other than vitamins. At the
bottom of the envelope, rolled into a blue cylinder and tightened with a
rubber
band, she found the test results. Stray words floated in the air in front of
her
as Moony drew in a long shuddering breath.

Mammography results. Sectional biopsy. Fourth stage malignancy. Metastasized.

Cancer. Her mother had breast cancer.

"Shit," she said. Her hands after she replaced the papers were shaking. From
outside echoed summer music, and she could hear voices -- her mother's,
Diana's,
Gary Bonetti's deep bass -- shouting above the tinny sound of a cassette
player
--

"Wouldn't it be nice if we could wake up

In the kind of world where we belong? "

You bitch," Moony whispered. She stood at the front window and stared down the
hill at the gazebo, her hands clamped beneath her armpits to keep them still.
Her face was streaked with tears. "When were you going to tell me, when were
you
going to fucking tell met"

At the foot of Mars Hill, alone by a patch of daylilies stood Jason, staring
back up at the cottage. A cigarette burned between his fingers, its scent
miraculously filling the little room. Even from here Moony could tell that
somehow and of course, he already knew.

Everyone had a hangover the next morning, not excluding Moony and Jason. In
spite of that the two met in the community chapel. Jason brought a thermos of
coffee, bright red and yellow dinosaurs stenciled on its sides, and blew ashes
from the bench so she could sit down.

"You shouldn't smoke in here." Moony coughed and slumped beside him. Jason
shrugged and stubbed out his cigarette, fished in his pocket and held out his
open palm.

"Here. Ibuprofen and valerian capsules. And there's bourbon in the coffee."

Moony snorted but took the pills, shooting back a mouthful of tepid coffee and
grimacing.

"Hair of the iguna," Jason said. "So really, Moony, you didn't know?"

"How the hell would I know?" Moony said wearily. "I mean, I knew it was
something --"

She glanced sideways at her friend. His slender legs were crossed at the
ankles
and he was barefoot. Already dozens of mosquito bites pied his arms and legs.
He
was staring at the little altar in the center of the room. He looked paler
than
usual, more tired, but that was probably just the hangover.

From outside, the chapel looked like all the other buildings at Mars Hill,
faded
gray shingles and white trim. Inside there was one large open room, with
benches
arranged in a circle around the walls, facing in to the plain altar. The altar
was heaped with wilting day lilies and lilacs, an empty bottle of chardonnay
and
a crumpled pack of Kents --Jason's brand -- and a black velvet hair ribbon
that
Moony recognized as her mother's. Beneath the ribbon was an old snapshot,
curled
at the edges. Moony knew the pose from years back. It showed her and Jason and
Ariel and Martin, standing at the edge of the pier with their faces raised
skyward, smiling and waving at Diana behind her camera. Moony made a face when
she saw it and took another swallow of coffee.

"I thought maybe she had AIDS," Moony said at last. "I knew she went to the
Walker Clinic once, I heard her on the phone to Diana about it."

Jason nodded, his mouth set in a tight smile. "So you should be happy she
doesn't. Hip hip hooray." Two years before Jason's father had tested
HIV-positive. Martin's lover, John, had died that spring.

Moony turned so that he couldn't see her face. "She has breast cancer. It's
metastasized. She won't see a doctor. This morning she let me feel it. . ."

Like a gnarled tree branch shoved beneath her mother's flesh, huge and hard
and
lumpy. Ariel thought she'd cry or faint or something but all Moony could do
was
wonder how she had never felt it before. Had she never noticed, or had it just
been that long since she'd hugged her mother?

She started crying, and Jason drew closer to her.

"Hey," he whispered, his thin arm edging around her shoulders. "It's okay,
Moony, don't cry, it's all right --"

How can you say that she felt like screaming, sobs constricting her throat so
she couldn't speak. When she did talk the words came out in anguished grunts.

"They're dying -- how can they -- Jason --"

"Shh --" he murmured. "Don't cry, Moony, don't cry. . ."

Beside her, Jason sighed and fought the urge for another cigarette. He wished
he'd thought about this earlier, come up with something to say that would make
Moony feel better. Something like, Hey! Get used to Everybody dies! He tried
to
smile, but he felt only sorrow and a headache prodding at the comers of his
eyes. Moony's head felt heavy on his shoulder. He shifted on the bench,
stroking
her hair and whispering until she grew quiet. Then they sat in silence.

He stared across the room, to the altar   and the wall beyond, where a stained
glass window would have been in another   kind of chapel. Here, a single great
picture window looked out onto the bay.   In the distance he could see the
Starry
Islands glittering in the sunlight, and   beyond them the emerald bulk of Blue
Hill and Cadillac Mountain rising above   the indigo water.

And, if he squinted, he could see Them. The Others, like tears or blots of
light
floating across his retina. The Golden Ones. The Greeters.

The Light Children.

"Hey!" he whispered. Moony sniffed and burrowed closer into his shoulder, but
he
wasn't talking to her. He was welcoming Them.

They were the real reason people had settled here, over a century ago. They
were
the reason Jason and Moony and their parents and all the others came here now;
although not everyone could see Them. Moony never had, nor Ariel's friend
Diana;
although Diana believed in Them, and Moony did not. You never spoke of Them,
and
if you did, it was always parenthetically and with a capital T --- "Rvis and I
were looking at the moon last night [They were there) and we thought we saw a
whale." Or, "Martin came over at midnight (he saw Them on the way) and we
played
Scrabble. . ."

A few years earlier a movement was afoot, to change the way of referring to
Them. In a single slender volume that was a history of the Mars Hill
spiritualist community, They were referred to as the Light Children, but no
one
ever really called Them that. Everyone just called them Them. It seemed the
most
polite thing to do, really, since no one knew what They called Themselves.

"And we'd hate to offend Them," as Ariel said.

That was always a fear at Mars Hill. That, despite the gentle nature of the
community's adherents, They inadvertently would be offended one day la
too-noisy
volleyball game on the rocky beach; a beer-fueled Solstice celebration
irrupting
into the dawn), and leave.

But They never did. Year after year the Light Children remained. They were a
magical commonplace, like the loons that nested on a nearby pond and made the
night an offertory with their cries, or the rainbows that inexplicably
appeared
over the Bay almost daily, even when there was no rain in sight. It was the
same
with Them. Jason would be walking down to call his father in from sailing, or
knocking at Moony's window to awaken her for a three A.M. stroll, and suddenly
there They'd be. A trick of the light, like a sundog or the aurora borealis:
golden patches swimming through the cool air. They appeared as suddenly as a
cormorant's head slicing up through the water, lingering sometimes for ten
minutes or so. Then They would be gone.

Jason saw Them a lot. The chapel was one of the places They seemed to like,
and
so he hung out there whenever he could. Sometimes he could sense Them moments
before They appeared. A shivering in the air would make the tips of his
fingers
go numb, and once there had been a wonderful smell, like warm buttered bread.
But usually there was no warning. If he closed his eyes while looking at Them,
Their image still appeared on the cloudy scrim of his inner eye, like gilded
tears. But that was all. No voices, no scent of rose petals, no rapping at the
door. You felt better after seeing Them, the way you felt better after seeing
a
rainbow or an eagle above the Bay. But there was nothing really magical about
Them, except the fact that They existed at all. They never spoke, or did
anything special, at least nothing you could sense. They were just there; but
Their presence meant everything at Mars Hill.

They were there now: flickering above the altar, sending blots of gold dancing
across the limp flowers and faded photograph. He wanted to point Them out to
Moony, but he'd tried before and she'd gotten mad at him.
"You think I'm some kind of idiot like my mother? she'd stormed, sweeping that
day's offering of irises from the altar onto the floor. "Give me a break,
Jason!"

Okay, I gave you a break, he thought now. Now I'll give you another.

Look, Moony, there They are! he thought; then said, "Moony. Look --"

He pointed, shrugging his shoulder so she'd have to move. But already They
were
gone.

"What?" Moony murmured. He shook his head, sighing.

"That picture," he said, and fumbled at his pocket for his cigarettes. "That
stupid old picture that Diana took. Can you believe it's still here?"

Moony lifted her head and rubbed her eyes, red and swollen. "Oh, I can believe
anything," she said bitterly, and filled her mug with more coffee.

In Martin Dionysos's kitchen, Ariel drank a cup of nettle tea and watched
avidly
as her friend ate a bowl of mung bean sprouts and nutritional yeast. lust like
in Annie Hall, she thought. Amazing.

"So now she knows and you're surprised she's pissed at you." Martin raised
another forkful of sprouts to his mouth, angling delicately to keep any from
failing to the floor. He raised one blond eyebrow as he chewed, looking like
some hardscrabble New Englander's idea of Satan, California surfer boy gone to
seed. Long gray-blond hair that was thinner than it had been a year ago, skin
that wasn't so much tanned as an even pale bronze, with that little goatee and
those piercing blue eyes, the same color as the Bay stretching outside the
window behind him. Oh yes: and a gold hoop earring and a heart tattoo that
enclosed the name JOHN and a T-shirt with the pink triangle and SILENCE-DEATH
printed in stem block letters. Satan on vacation.

"I'm not surprised," Ariel said, a little crossly. "I'm just, mmm,
disappointed.
That she got so upset."

Martin's other eyebrow arched. "Disappointed? As in, 'Moony, darling I have
breast cancer (which I have kept a secret from you for seven months) and I am
very disappointed that you are not self-actualized enough to deal with this
without falling to pieces'?"

"She didn't fall to pieces." Ariel's crossness went over the line into
fullblown
annoyance. She frowned and jabbed a spoon into her tea. "I wish she'd fall to
pieces, she's always so --" She waved the hand holding the spoon, sending
green
droplets raining onto Martin's knee. "-- so something."

"Self-assured?"

"I guess. Self-assured and smug, you know? Why is it teenagers are always so
fucking smug?"

"Because they share a great secret," Martin said mildly, and took another bite
of sprouts.
"Oh yeah? What's that?"

"Their parents are all assholes."

Ariel snorted with laughter, leaned forward to get her teacup out of the
danger
zone and onto the table. "Oh, Martin," she said. Suddenly her eyes were filled
with tears. "Damn it all to hell. . ."

Martin put his bowl on the table and stepped over to take her in his arms. He
didn't say anything, and for a moment Ariel flashed back to the previous
spring,
the same tableau only in reverse, with her holding Martin while he sobbed
uncontrollably in the kitchen of his San Francisco townhouse. It was two days
after John's funeral, and she was on her way to the airport. She knew then
about
the breast cancer but she hadn't told Martin yet; didn't want to dim any of
the
dark luster of his grief.

Now it was her grief, but in a strange way she knew it was his, too. There was
this awful thing that they held in common, a great unbroken chain of grief
that
wound from one coast to the other. She hadn't wanted to share it with Moony,
hadn't wanted her to feel its weight and breadth. But it was too late, now.
Moony knew and besides, what did it matter? She was dying, Martin was dying
and
there wasn't a fucking thing anyone could do about it.

"Hey," he said at last. His hand stroked her mass of dark hair, got itself
tangled near her shoulder, snagging one of the long silver-and-quartz-crystal
earrings she had put on that morning, for luck. "Ouch."

Ariel snorted again, laughing in spite of, or maybe because of, it all. Martin
extricated his hand, held up two fingers with a long curling strand of hair
caught between them: a question mark, a wise serpent waiting to strike. She
had
seen him after the cremation take the lock of John's hair that he had saved
and
hold it so, until suddenly it burst into flames, and then watched as the fizz
of
ash flared out in a dark penumbra around Martin's fingers. No such thing
happened now, no Faery Pagan pyrotechnics. She wasn't dead yet, there was no
sharp cold wind of grief to fan Martin's peculiar gift. He let the twirl of
hair
fall away and looked at her and said, "You know, I talked to Adele."

Adele was Mrs. Grose, she of the pug dog and suspiciously advanced years.
Ariel
retrieved her cup and her equanimity, sipping at the nettle tea as Martin went
on, "She said she thought we had a good chance. You especially. She said for
you
it might happen. They might come." He finished and leaned back in his chair,
spearing the last forkful of sprouts.

Ariel said, "Oh yes?" Hardly daring to think of it; no don't think of it at
all.

Martin shrugged, twisted to look over his shoulder at the endless sweep of
Penobscot Bay. His eyes were bright, so bright she wondered if he were
fighting
tears or perhaps something else, something only Martin would allow himself to
feel here and now. Joy, perhaps. Hope.

"Maybe," he said. At his words her heart beat a little faster in her breast,
buried beneath the mass that was doing its best to crowd it out. "That's all.
Maybe. It might. Happen."

And his hand snaked across the table to hers and held it, clutched it like it
was a link in that chain that ran between them, until her fingers went cold
and
numb.

On Wednesday evenings the people at Mars Hill gave readings for the public.
Tarot, palms, auras, dreams-- five dollars a pop, nothing guaranteed. The
chapel
was cleaned, the altar swept of offerings and covered with a frayed red
and-white checked table cloth from Diana's kitchen and a few candles in empty
Chianti bottles.

"It's not very atmospheric," Gary Bonetti said, as someone always did. Mrs.
Grose nodded from her bench and fiddled with her rosary beads.

"Au contraire," protested Martin. "It's very atmospheric, if you're in the
mood
for spaghetti carbonara at Luigi's."

"May I recommend the primavera?" said Jason. In honor of the occasion he had
put
on white duck pants and white shirt and red bow tie. He waved at Moony, who
stood at the door taking five dollar bills from nervous, giggly tourists and
the
more solemn-faced locals, who made this pilgrimage every summer. Some regulars
came week after week, year after year. Sad Brenda, hoping for the Tarot card
that would bring news from her drowned child Mr. Spruce, a roddy-faced
lobsterman who always tipped Mrs. Grose ten dollars. The Hamptonites Jason had
dubbed Mr. and Mrs. Pissant, who were anxious about their auras. Tonight the
lobsterman was there, with an ancient woman who could only be his mother, and
the Pissants, and two teenage couples, long blonde hair and sunburned, reeking
of marijuana and summer money.

The teenagers went to Martin, lured perhaps by his tie-dyed caftan, neatly
pressed and swirling down to his Birkenstock-clad feet.

"Boat trash," hissed Jason, arching a nearly invisible white-blond eyebrow as
they passed. "I saw them in Camden, getting off a yacht the size of the fire
station. God, they make me sick."

Moony tightened her smile. Catch her admitting to envy of people like that.
She
swiveled on her chair, looking outside to see if there were any newcomers
making
their way to the chapel through the cool summer night. "I think this is gonna
be
it," she said. She glanced wistfully at the few crumpled bills nesting in an
old
oatmeal tin. "Maybe we should, like, advertise or something. It's been so slow
this summer."

Jason only grunted, adjusting his bow tie and glaring at the rich kids, now
deep
in conference with his father. The Pissants had fallen to Diana, who with her
chignon of blonde hair and gold-buttoned little black dress could have been
one
of their neighbors. That left the lobsterman and his aged mother.

They stood in the middle of the big room, looking not exactly uneasy or lost,
but as though they were waiting for someone to usher them to their proper
seats.
And as though she read their minds (but wasn't that her job?), Mrs. Grose
swept
up suddenly from her comer of the chapel, a warm South Wind composed of yards
of
very old rayon fabric, Jean Nate After-Bath, and arms large and round and
powdered as wheaten loaves.

"Mr. Spruce," she cried, extravagantly trilling her rrr's and opening those
arms
like a stage gypsy. "You have come --"

"Why, yes," the lobsterman answered, embarrassed but also grateful. "I, uh --
I
brought my mother, Mrs. (;rose. She says she remembers you.'--'

"I do," said Mrs. Spruce. Moony twisted to watch, curious. She had always
wondered about Mrs. Grose. She claimed to be a true clairvoyant. She had
predicted things-- nothing very useful, though. What the weather would be like
the weekend of Moony's Junior Prom (rainy), but not whether she would be asked
to go, or by whom. The day Jason would receive a letter from Harvard (Tuesday,
the fifth of April), but not whether he'd be accepted there (he was not). It
aggravated Moony, like so much at Mars Hill. What was the use of being a
psychic
if you could never come up with anything really useful?

But then there was the story about Harry Houdini. Mrs. Grose loved to tell it,
how when she was still living in Chicago this short guy came one day and she
gave him a message from his mother and he tried to make her out to be a fraud.
It was a stupid story, except for one thing. If it really had happened, it
would
make Mrs. Grose about ninety or a hundred years old. And she didn't look a day
over sixty.

Now Mrs. Grose was cooing over a woman who really did look to be about ninety.
Mrs. Spruce peered up at her through rheumy eyes, shaking her head and saying
in
a whispery voice, "I can't believe it's you. I was just a girl, but you don't
look any different at all. . ."

"Oh, flattery, flattery!" Mrs. Grose laughed and rubbed her nose with a
Kleenex.
"What can we tell you tonight, Mrs. Spruce?"

Moony turned away. It was too weird. She watched Martin entertaining the four
golden children, then felt Jason coming up behind her: the way some people
claim
they can tell a cat is in the room, by some subtle disturbance of air and
dust.
A cat is there. Jason is there.

"They're all going to Harvard. I can't believe it," he said, mere disgust
curdled into utter loathing. "And that one, the blond on the end --" "They're
all blond, Jason," said Moony. "You're blond."

"I am an albino," Jason said with dignity. "Check him out, the Nazi Youth with
the Pearl Jam T-shirt. He's a legacy, absolutely. SAT scores of 1060, tops. I
know." He closed his eyes and wiggled his fingers and made a whoo-whoo noise,
beckoning spirits to come closer. Moony laughed and covered her mouth. From
where he sat Martin raised an eyebrow, requesting silence. Moony and Jason
turned and walked outside.

"How old do you think she is?" Moony asked, after they had gone a safe
distance
from the chapel.

"Who?"

"Mrs. Grose."

"Adele?" Jason frowned into the twilit distance, thinking of the murky shores
and shoals of old age. "Jeez, I dunno. Sixty? Fifty?"

Moony shook her head. "She's got to be older than that. I mean, that story
about
Houdini, you know?"

"Huh! Houdini. The closest she ever got to Houdini is seeing some Siegfried
and
Roy show out in Las Vegas."

"I don't think she's ever left here. At least not since I can remember." Jason
nodded absently, then squatted in the untidy drive, squinting as he stared out
into the darkness occluding the Bay. Fireflies formed mobile constellations
within the birch trees. As a kid he had always loved fireflies, until he had
seen Them. Now he thought of the Light Children as a sort of evolutionary
step,
somewhere between lightning bugs and angels.

Though you hardly ever see Them at night, he thought. Now why is that? He
rocked
back on his heels, looking like some slender pale gargoyle toppled from a
modemist cathedral, the cuffs of his white oxford-cloth shirt rolled up to
show
large bony wrists and surprisingly strong square hands, his bow tie unraveled
and hanging rakishly around his neck. Of a sudden he recalled being in this
same
spot two years ago, grinding out a cigarette as Martin and John approached.
The
smoke bothered John, sent him into paroxysms of coughing so prolonged and
intense that more than once they had set Jason's heart pounding, certain that
This Was It, John was going to die right here, right now, and it would be all
Jason's fault for smoking. Only of course it didn't happen that way.

"The longest death since Little Nell's," John used to say, laughing hoarsely.
That was when he could still laugh, still talk. At the end it had been others
softly talking, Martin and Jason and their friends gathered around John's bed
at
home, taking turns, spelling each other. After a while Jason couldn't stand to
be with them. It was too much like John was already dead. The body in the bed
so
wasted, bones cleaving to skin so thin and mottled it was like damp newsprint.
By the end, Jason refused to accompany Martin to the therapist they were
supposed to see. He refused to go with him to the meetings where men and women
talked about dying, about watching loved ones go so horribly slowly. Jason
just
couldn't take it. Grief he had always thought of as an emotion, a mood,
something that possessed you but that you eventually escaped. Now he knew it
was
different. Grief was a country, a place you entered hesitantly, or were thrown
into without warning. But once you were there, amidst the roiling formless
blackness and stench of despair, you could not leave. Even if you wanted to:
you
could only walk and walk and walk, traveling on through the black reaches with
the sound of screaming in your ears, and hope that someday you might glimpse
far
off another country, another place where you might someday rest.

Jason had followed John a long ways into that black land. And now his own
father
would be going there. Maybe not for good, not yet, but Jason knew. An
HIV-positive diagnosis might mean that Death was a long ways off but Jason
knew
his father had already started walking.

". . .you think they don't leave?"

Jason started. "Huh?" He looked up into Moony's wide gray eyes. "I'm sorry,
what?"

"Why do you think they don't leave? Mrs. Grose and Gary. You know, the ones
who
stay here all year." Moony's voice was exasperated. He wondered how many times
she'd asked him the same thing.

"I dunno. I mean, they have to leave sometimes. How do they get groceries and
stuff?" He sighed and scrambled to his feet. "There's only two of them, maybe
they pay someone to bring stuff in. I know Gary goes to the Beach Store
sometimes. It's not like they're under house arrest. Why?"

Moony shrugged. In the twilight she looked spooky, more like a witch than her
mother or Diana or any of those other wannabes. Long dark hair and those
enormous pale gray eyes, face like the face of the cat who'd been turned into
a
woman in a fairy tale his father had read him once. Jason grinned, thinking of
Moony jumping on a mouse. No way. But hey, even if she did, it would take more
than that to turn him off.

"You thinking of staying here ?" he asked slyly. He slipped an arm around her
shoulders. "'Cause, like, I could keep you company or something. I hear Maine
gets cold in the winter."

"No." Moony shrugged off his arm and started walking toward the water: no
longer
exasperated, more like she was distracted. "My mother is."

" Your mother?"

He followed her until she stopped at the edge of a gravel beach. The evening
sky
was clear. On the opposite shore, a few lights glimmered in Dark Harbor,
reflections of the first stars overhead. From somewhere up along the coast,
Bayside or Nagaseek or one of the other summer colonies, the sounds of
laughter
and skirling music echoed very faintly over the water, like a song heard on
some
distant station very late at night. But it wasn't late, not yet even nine
o'clock. In summers past, that had been early for Moony and Jason, who would
often stay up with the adults talking and poring over cards and runes until
the
night grew cold and spent.

But tonight for some reason the night already felt old. Jason shivered and
kicked at the pebbly beach. The last pale light of sunset east an antique glow
upon stones and touched the edge of the water with gold. As he watched, the
light withdrew, a gauzy veil drawn back teasingly until the shore shimmered
with
afterglow, like blue glass.

"I heard her talking with Diana," Moony said. Her voice was unsettlingly loud
and clear in the still air. "She was saying she might stay on, after I go off
to
school. I mean, she was talking like she wasn't going back at all, I mean not
back to Kamensic. Like she might just stay here and never leave again." Her
voice cracked on the words never leave again and she shuddered, hugging
herself.

"Hey," said Jason. He walked over and put his arms around her, her dark hair a
perfumed net that drew him in until he felt dizzy and had to draw back,
gasping
a little, the smell of her nearly overwhelming that of rugosa roses and the
sea.
"Hey, it's okay, Moony, really it's okay."

Moony's voice sounded explosive, as though she had been holding her breath. "I
just can't believe she's giving up like this. I mean, no doctors, nothing.
She's
just going to stay here and die."

"She might not die," said Jason, his own voice a little desperate. "I mean,
look
at Adele. A century and counting. The best is yet to come."

Moony laughed brokenly. She leaned forward so that her hair once again spilled
over him, her wet cheek resting on his shoulder. "Oh Jason. If it weren't for
you I'd go crazy, you know that? I'd just go fucking nuts."

Nuts, thought Jason. His arms tightened around her, the cool air and faraway
music nearly drowning him as he stroked her head and breathed her in. Crazy,
oh
yes. And they stood there until the moon showed over Dark Harbor, and all that
far-off music turned to silvery light above the Bay.

Two days later Ariel and Moony went to see the doctor in Bangor. Moony drove,
an
hour's trip inland, up along the old road that ran beside the Penobscot River,
through failed stonebound (arms and past trailer encampments like sad rusted
toys, until finally they reached the sprawl around the city, the kingdom of
car
lots and franchises and shopping plazas.
The hospital was an old brick building with a shiny new white wing grafted on.
Ariel and Moony walked through a gleaming steel-and-glass door set in the
expanse of glittering concrete. But they ended up in a tired office on the far
end of the old wing, where the squeak of rubber wheels on worn linoleum played
counterpoint to a loudly echoing, ominous drip-drip that never ceased the
whole
time they were there.

"Ms. Rising. Please, come in."

Ariel squeezed her daughter's hand, then followed the doctor into her office.
It
was a small bright room, a hearty wreath of living ivy trained around its
single
grimy window in defiance of the lack of sunlight and, perhaps, the black
weight
of despair that Ariel felt everywhere, chairs, desk, floor, walls.

"I received your records from New York," the doctor said. She was a slight
fine-boned young woman with sleek straight hair and a silk dress more
expensive
than what you usually saw in Maine. The little metal name-tag on her breast
might have been an odd bit of heirloom jewelry. "You realize that even as of
three weeks ago, the cancer had spread to the point where our treatment
options
are now quite limited."

Ariel nodded, her arms crossed protectively across her chest. She felt
strange,
light-headed. She hadn't been able to eat much the last day or two, that
morning
had swallowed a mouthful of coffee and a stale muffin to satisfy Moony but
that
was all. "I know," she said heavily. "I don't know why I'm here."

"Frankly, I don't know either," the doctor replied. "If you had optioned for
some kind of intervention oh, even two months ago; but now. . ."

Ariel tilted her head, surprised at how sharp the other woman's tone was. The
doctor went on, "It's a great burden to put on your daughter --" She looked in
the direction of the office door, then glanced down at the charts in her hand.
"Other children?"

Ariel shook her head. "No."

The doctor paused, gently slapping the sheaf of charts and records against her
open palm. Finally she said, "Well. Let's examine you, then."

An hour later Ariel slipped back into the waiting room. Moony looked up from a
magazine. Her gray eyes were bleary and her tired expression hastily congealed
into the mask of affronted resentment with which she faced Ariel these days.

"So?" she asked as they retraced their steps back through cinder-block
corridors
to the hospital exit. "What'd she say?"

Ariel stared straight ahead, through the glass doors to where the summer
afternoon waited to pounce on them. Exhaustion had seeped into her like heat;
like the drugs the doctor had offered and Ariel had refused, the contents of
crystal vials that could buy a few more weeks, maybe even months if she was
lucky, enough time to make a graceful farewell to the world. But Ariel didn't
want weeks or months, and she sure as hell didn't want graceful goodbyes. She
wanted years, decades. A cantankerous or dreamy old age, aggravating the shit
out of her grandchildren with her talk about her own sunflower youth. Failing
that, she wanted screaming and gnashing of teeth, her friends tearing their
hair
out over her death, and Moony. . .

And Moony. Ariel stopped in front of a window, one hand out to press against
the
smooth cool glass. Grief and horror hit her like a stone, struck her between
the
eyes so that she gasped and drew her hands to her face.

"Mom!" Moony cried, shocked. "Mom, what is it, are you all right? --"

Ariel nodded, tears burning down her cheeks. "I'm fine," she said, and gave a
twisted smile. "Really, I'm --"

"What did she say?" demanded Moony. "The doctor, what did she tell you, what
is
it?"

Ariel wiped her eyes, a black line of mascara smeared across her finger.
"Nothing. Really, Moony, nothing's changed. It's just -- it's just hard. Being
this sick. It's hard, that's all."

She could see in her daughter's face confusion, despair, but also relief.
Ariel
hadn't said death, she hadn't said dying, she hadn't since that first day said
cancer. She'd left those words with the doctor, along with the scrips for
morphine and Fiorinal, all that could be offered to her now. "Come on," she
said, and walked through the sliding doors. "I'm supposed to have lunch with
Mrs. Grose and Diana, and it's already late."

Moony stared at her in disbelief: was her mother being stoic or just crazy?
But
Ariel didn't say anything else, and after a moment her daughter followed her
to
the car.

In Mars Hill's little chapel Jason sat and smoked. On the altar in front of
him
were several weeks' accumulated offerings from the denizens of Mars Hill. An
old-fashioned envelope with a glassine window, through which he could glimpse
the face of a twenty-dollar bill -- that was from Mrs. Grose, who always gave
the money she'd earned from readings (and then retrieved it at the end of the
summer). A small square of brilliantly woven cloth from Diana, whose looms
punctuated the soft morning with their steady racketing. A set of blueprints
from Rvis Capricorn. Shasta Daisy's battered Ephemera. The copy of Paul
Bowles'
autobiography that Jason's father had been reading on the flight out from the
West Coast. In other words, the usual flotsam of love and whimsy that washed
up
here every summer. From where Jason sat, he could see his own benefaction, a
heap of small white roses, already limp but still giving out their heady sweet
scent, and a handful of blackberries he'd picked from the thicket down by the
pier. Not much of an offering but you never knew.

From beneath his roses peeked the single gift that puzzled him, a lacy silk
camisole patterned with pale pink-and-yellow blossoms. An odd choice of
offering
Jason thought. Because for all the unattached adults sipping chardonnay and
Bellinis of a summer evening the atmosphere at Mars Hill was more like that of
summer camp. A chaste sort of giddiness ruled here, compounded of equal parts
of
joy and longing that always made Jason think of the garlanded jackass and
wistful fairies in A Midsummer Night's Dream. His father and Ariel and all the
rest stumbling around in the dark, hoping for a glimpse of Them, and settling
for fireflies and the lights from Dark Harbor. Mars Hill held surprisingly
little in the way of unapologetic lust-- except for himself and Moony, of
course. And Jason knew that camisole didn't belong to Moony.

At the thought of Moony he sighed and tapped his ashes onto the dusty floor.
It
was a beautiful morning gin-clear and with a stiff warm breeze from the west.
Perfect sailing weather. He should be out with his father on the Wendameen.
Instead he'd stayed behind, to write and think. Earlier he'd tried to get
through to Moony somewhere in Bangor, but Jason couldn't send his thoughts any
farther than from one end of Mars Hill to the other. For some reason, smoking
cigarettes seemed to help. He had killed half a pack already this morning but
gotten nothing more than a headache and a raw throat. Now he had given up. It
never seemed to work with anyone except Moony, anyhow, and then only if she
was
nearby.

He had wanted to give her some comfort. He wanted her to know how much he
loved
her, how she meant more to him than anyone or anything in the world, except
perhaps his father. Was it allowed, to feel this much for a person when your
father was HIV-positive? Jason frowned and stubbed out his cigarette in a
lobster-shaped ashtray, already overflowing with the morning's telepathic
aids.
He picked up his notebook and Rapidograph pen and, still frowning, stared at
the
letter he'd begun last night.

Dearest Moony,

(he crossed out eat, it sounded too fussy)

 *
I just want you to know that I understand how you feel. When John died it was
the most horrible thing in the world, even worse than the divorce because I
was
just a kid then. I just want you to know how much I love you, you mean more
than
anyone or anything in the world, and

And what? Did he really know how she felt? His mother wasn't dying, his mother
was in the Napa Valley running her vineyard, and while it was true enough that
John's death had been the most horrible thing he'd ever lived through, could
that be the same as having your mother die? He thought maybe it could. And
then
of course there was the whole thing with his father. Was that worse? His
father
wasn't sick, of course, at least he didn't have any symptoms yet; but was it
worse for someone you loved to have the AIDS virus, to watch and wait for
months
or years, rather than have it happen quickly like with Ariel? Last night he'd
sat in the living room while his father and Gary Bonetti were on the porch
talking about her.

"I give her only a couple of weeks," Martin had said, with that dry strained
calm voice he'd developed over the last few years of watching his friends die.
"The thing is, if she'd gone for treatment right away she could be fine now.
She
could be fine." The last word came out in an uncharacteristic burst of
vehemence, and Jason grew cold to hear it. Because of course even with
treatment
his father probably wouldn't be all right, not now, not ever. He'd never be
fine
again. Ariel had thrown all that away.

"She should talk to Adele," Gary said softly. Jason heard the clink of ice as
he
poured himself another daiquiri. "When I had those visions five years ago,
that's when I saw Adele. You should too, Martin. You really should."

"I don't know as Adele can help me," Martin said, somewhat coolly. "She's just
a
guest here, like you or any of the rest of us. And you know that you can't
make
Them. . ."

His voice trailed off. Jason sat bolt upright on the sofa, suddenly feeling
his
father there, like a cold finger stabbing at his brain.

"Jason?" Martin called, his voice tinged with annoyance. "If you want to
listen,
come in here, please."

Jason had sworn under his breath and stormed out through the back door. It was
impossible, sometimes, living with his father. Better to have a psychic
wannabe
like Ariel for a parent, and not have to worry about being spied on all the
time.

Now, from outside the chapel came frenzied barking. Jason started, his
thoughts
broken. He glanced through the open door to see Gary and his black labrador
retriever heading down to the water. Gary was grinning, arms raised as he
waved
at someone out of sight. And suddenly Jason had an image of his father in the
Wendameen, the fast little sloop skirting the shore as Martin stood at the
mast
waving back, his long hair tangled by the wind. The vision left Jason nearly
breathless. He laughed, shaking his head, and at once decided to follow Gary
to
the landing and meet his father there. He picked up his pen and notebook and
turned to go. Then stopped, his neck prickling. Very slowly he turned, until
he
stood facing the altar once more.

They were there. A shimmering haze above the fading roses, like Zeus's golden
rain falling upon imprisoned Danae Jason's breath caught in his throat as he
watched Them -- They were so beautiful, so strange. Flickering in the chapel's
dusty air, like so many scintillant coins. He could sense rather than hear a
faint chiming as They darted quick as hummingbirds from his roses to Mrs.
Grose's envelope, alighting for a moment upon Diana's weaving and Rvis's prize
tomatoes before settling upon two things: his father's book and the unknown
camisole.

And then with a sharp chill Jason knew whose it was. Ariel's, of course -- who
else would own something so unabashedly romantic but also slightly tacky?
Maybe
it was meant to be a bad joke, or perhaps it was a real offering, heartfelt,
heartbreaking. He stared at Them, a glittering carpet tossed over those two
pathetic objects, and had to shield his eyes with his hand. It was too bright,
They seemed to be growing more and more brilliant as he watched. Like a swarm
of
butterflies he had once seen, mourning cloaks resting in a snow-covered field
one warm March afternoon, their wings slowly fanning the air as though They
had
been stunned by the thought of spring. But what could ever surprise Them, the
Light Children, the summer's secret?

Then as he watched They began to fade. The glowing golden edge of the swarm
grew
dim and disappeared. One by one all the other gilded coins blinked into
nothing,
until the altar stood as it had minutes before, a dusty collection of things,
odd and somewhat ridiculous. Jason's head pounded and he felt faint; then
realized he'd been holding his breath. He let it out, shuddering, put his pen
and notebook on the floor and walked to the altar.

Everything was as it had been, roses, cloth, paper, tomatoes; excepting only
his
father's offering and Ariel's. Hesitantly he reached to touch the book Martin
had left, then recoiled.

The cover of the book had been damaged. When he leaned over to stare at it
more
closely, he saw that myriad tiny holes had been burned in the paper, in what
at
first seemed to be a random pattern. But when he picked it up -gingerly, as
though it might yet release an electrical jolt or some other hidden energy --
he
saw that the tiny perforations formed an image, blurred but unmistakable. The
shadow of a hand, four fingers splayed across the cover as though gripping it.

Jason went cold. He couldn't have explained how, but he knew that it was a
likeness of his father's hand that he saw there, eerie and chilling as those
monstrous shadows left by victims of the bombings at Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
With a frightened gasp he tossed the book back onto the altar. For a moment he
stood beside the wooden table, half-poised to flee; but finally reached over
and
tentatively pushed aside his roses to fully reveal the camisole.

It was just like the book. Thousands of tiny bum-holes made a mined lace of
the
pastel silk, most of them clustered around one side of the bodice. He picked
it
up, catching a faint fragrance, lavender and marijuana, and held it out by its
pink satin straps. He raised it, turning toward the light streaming through
the
chapel's picture window, and saw that the pinholes formed a pattern, elegant
as
the tracery of veins and capillaries on a leaf. A shadowy bull's-eye --
breast,
aureole, nipple drawn on the silken cloth.

With a small cry Jason dropped the camisole. Without looking back he ran from
the chapel. Such was his hurry that he forgot his pen and notebook and the
half-written letter to Moony, piled carefully on the dusty floor. And so he
did
not see the shining constellation that momentarily appeared above the pages, a
curious cloud that hovered there like a child's dream of weather before
flowering into a golden rain.

Moony sat hunched on the front stoop, waiting for her mother to leave. Ariel
had
been in her room for almost half an hour, her luncheon date with Diana and
Mrs.
Grose notwithstanding. When finally she emerged, Moony could hear the soft
uneven tread of her flip-flops, padding from bedroom to bedroom to kitchen.
There was the sigh of the refrigerator opening and closing, the muted pop of a
cork being pulled from a bottle, the long grateful gurgle of wine being poured
into a glass. Then Ariel herself in the doorway behind her. Without looking
Moony could tell that she'd put on The Skirt. She could smell it, the musty
scents of patchouli and cannabis resin and the honeysuckle smell of the
expensive detergent Ariel used to wash it by hand, as though it were some
precious winding sheet.

"I'm going to Adele's for lunch." Moony nodded silently.

"I'll be back in a few hours."

More silence.

"You know where to find me if anyone comes by." Ariel nudged her daughter
gently
with her toe. "Okay?"

Moony sighed. "Yeah, okay."

She watched her mother walk out the door, sun bouncing off her hair in glossy
waves. When Ariel was out of sight she hurried down the hall.

In her mother's room, piles of clothes and papers covered the worn Double
Wedding Ring quilt, as though tossed helter-skelter from her bureau.

"Jeez, what a mess," said Moony. She slowly crossed to the bed. It was covered
with scarves and tangled skeins of pantyhose; drifts of old catering receipts,
bills, canceled checks. A few paperbacks with yellowed pages that had been
summer reading in years past. A back issue of Gourmet magazine and the Maine
Progressive. A Broadway ticket stub from Prelude to a Kiss. Grimacing, Moony
prodded the edge of last year's calendar from the Beach Store & Pizza to Go.

What had her mother been looking for?

Then, as if by magic, Moony saw it. Its marbled cover suddenly glimpsed
beneath
a dusty strata of tarot cards and Advil coupons, like some rare bit of fossil,
lemur vertebrae or primate jaw hidden within papery shale. She drew it out
carefully, tilting it so the light slid across the title.

MARS HILL: ITS HISTORY AND LOREbyAbigail Merithew Cox, A Lover of Its
Mysteries
With careful fingers Moony rifled the pages. Dried rose petals fell out,
releasing the sad smell of summers past, and then a longer plume of liatris
dropped to the floor, fresh enough to have left a faint purplish stain upon
the
page. Moony drew the book up curiously, marking the page where the liattis had
fallen, and read,

 *
Perhaps strangest of all the Mysteries of our Colony at Mars Hill is the
presence of those Enchanted Visitors who make their appearance now and then,
to
the eternal Delight of those of us fortunate enough to receive the benison of
their presence. I say Delight, though many of us who have conjured with them
say
that the Experience resembles Rapture more than mere Delight, and even that
Surpassing Ecstasy of which the Ancients wrote and which is at the heart of
all
our Mysteries; though we are not alone in enjoying the favor of our Visitors.
It
is said by my Aunt, Sister Rosemary Merithew, that the Pasamaquoddie Indians
who
lived here long before the civilizing influence of the White Man, also
entertained these Ethereal Creatures, which are in appearance like to those
fairy lights called Foxfire or Will O' The Wisp, and which may indeed be the
inspiration for such spectral rumors. The Pasamaquoddie named them Akinikl,
which in their language means The Greeters; and this I think is a most
appropriate title for our Joyous Guests, who bring only Good News from the
Other
Side, and who feast upon our mortality as a man sups upon rare meats. . .

Moony stared at the page in horror and disgust. Feasting upon mortality? She
recalled her mother and Jason talking about the things they called the Light
Children, Jason's disappointment that They had never appeared to Moony. As
though there was something wrong with her, as though she wasn't worthy of
seeing
Them. But she had never felt that way. She had always suspected that Jason and
her mother and the rest were mistaken about the Light Children. When she was
younger, she had even accused her mother of lying about seeing Them. But the
other people at Mars Hill spoke of Them, and Jason, at least, would never lie
to
Moony. So she had decided there must be something slightly delusional about
the
whole thing. Like a mass hypnosis, or maybe some kind of mass drug flashback,
which seemed more likely considering the histories of some of her mother's
friends.

Still, that left Mrs. Grose, who never even took an aspirin. Who, as far as
Moony knew, had never been sick in her life, and who certainly seemed immune
to
most of the commonplace ailments of what must be, despite appearances, an
advanced age. Mrs. Grose claimed to speak with the Light Children, to have a
sort of understanding of Them that Ariel and the others lacked. And Moony had
always held Mrs. Grose in awe. Maybe because her own grandparents were all
dead,
maybe just because of that story about Houdini -- it was too fucking weird, no
one could have made it up.

And so maybe no one had made up the Light Children, either. Moony tapped the
book's cover, frowning. Why couldn't she see Them? Was it because she didn't
believe? The thought annoyed her. As though she were a kid who'd found out
about
Santa Claus, and was being punished for learning the truth. She stared at the
book's cover, the gold lettering flecked with dust, the peppering of black and
green where salt air and mildew had eaten away at the cloth. The edge of one
page crumbled as she opened it once more.

 *
Many of my brothers and sisters can attest to the virtues of Our Visitors.
particularly Their care for the dying and afflicted . . .

"Fucking bullshit," yelled Moony. She threw the book across the room, hard, so
that it slammed into the wall beside her mother's bureau. With a soft crack
the
spine broke. She watched stonily as yellow pages and dried blossoms fluttered
from between the split covers, a soft explosion of antique dreams. She left
the
room without picking up the mess, the door slamming shut behind her.

"I was consumptive," Mrs. Grose was saying, nodding as she looked in turn from
Ariel to Diana to the pug sprawled panting on the worn chintz sofa beside
them.
"Tuberculosis, you know. Coming here saved me."

"You mean like, taking the waters ?" asked Ariel. She shook back her hair and
took another sip of her gin-and-tonic. "Like they used to do at Saratoga
Springs
and places like that.?"

"Not like that at all," replied Mrs. Grose firmly. She raised one white
eyebrow
and frowned. "I mean, Mars Hill saved me."

Saved you for what? thought Ariel, choking back another mouthful of gin. She
shuddered. She knew she shouldn't drink, these days she could feel it seeping
into her, like that horrible barium they injected into you to do tests. But
she
couldn't stop. And what was the point, anyway?

"But you think it might help her, if she stayed here?" Diana broke in,
oblivious
of Mrs. Grose's imperious gaze. "And Martin, do you think it could help him
too?"

"I don't thik anything," said Mrs. Grose, and she reached over to envelope the
wheezing pug with one large fat white hand. "It is absolutely not up to me at
all. I am simply telling you the facts."

"Of course," Ariel said, but she could tell from Diana's expression that her
words had come out slurred. "Of course," she repeated with dignity, sitting up
and smoothing the folds of her patchwork skirt.

"As long as you understand," Mrs. Grose said in a gentler tone. "We are guests
here, and guests do not ask favors of their hosts."

The other two women nodded. Ariel carefully put her glass on the coffee table
and stood, wiping her sweating hands on her skirt. "I better go now," she
said.
Her head pounded and she felt nauseated, for all that she'd barely nibbled at
the ham sandwiches and macaroni salad Mrs. Grose had set out for lunch. "Home.
I
think I'd better go home."

"I'll go with you," said Diana. She stood and east a quick look at their
hostess. "I wanted to borrow that book. . ."

Mrs. Grose saw them to the door, holding open the screen and swatting
threateningly at mosquitoes as they walked outside. "Remember what I told
you,"
she called as they started down the narrow road, Diana with one arm around
Ariel's shoulder. "Meditation and nettle tea. And patience."

"Patience," Ariel murmured; but nobody heard.

The weeks passed. The weather was unusually clear and warm, Mars Hill bereft
of
the cloak of mist and fog that usually covered it in August. Martin Dionysos
took the Wendameen out nearly every afternoon, savoring the time alone, the
hours spent fighting wind and waves-- antagonists he felt he could win
against.

"It's the most perfect summer we've ever had," Gary Bonetti said often to his
friend. Too often, Martin thought bitterly. Recently, Martin was having what
Jason called Millennial Thoughts, seeing ominous portents in everything from
the
tarot cards he dealt out to stricken tourists on Wednesday nights to the
pattern
of kelp and maidenhair left on the gravel beach after one of the summer's few
storms. He had taken to avoiding Ariel, a move that filled him with
self-loathing, for all that he told himself that he still needed time to
grieve
for John before giving himself over to another death. But it wasn't that, of
course. Or at least it wasn't only that. It was fear, The Fear. It was
listening
to his own heart pounding as he lay alone in bed at night, counting the beats,
wondering at what point it all began to break down, at what point It would
come
to take him.

So he kept to himself. He begged off going on the colony's weekly outing to
the
little Mexican restaurant up the road. He even stopped attending the weekly
readings in the chapel. Instead, he spent his evenings alone, writing to
friends
back in the Bay Area. After drinking coffee with Jason every morning he'd turn
away.

"I'm going to work now," he'd announce, and Jason would nod and leave to find
Moony, grateful, his father thought, for the opportunity to escape.

Millennial Thoughts.

Martin Dionysos had given over a comer of his cottage's living room to a
studio.
There was a tiny drafting table, his portable computer, an easel, stacks of
books; the week's forwarded offerings of Out and The Advocate and Q and The
Bay
Weekly, and, heaped on an ancient stained Windsor chair, the usual pungent
mess
of oils and herbal decoctions that he used in his work. Golden morning light
streamed through the wide mullioned windows, smelling of salt and the diesel
fumes from Diana's ancient Volvo. On the easel a large unprimed canvas rested,
somewhat unevenly due to the cant of a floor slanted enough that you could
drop
a marble in the kitchen and watch it roll slowly but inexorably to settle in
the
left-hand comer of the living room. Gary Bonetti claimed that it wasn't that
all
of the cottages on Mars Hill were built by incompetent architects. It was the
magnetic pull of the ocean just meters away; it was the imperious reins of the
East, of the Moon, of the magic charters of the Other world, that made it
impossible to find any two comers that were plumb. Martin and the others
laughed
at Gary's pronouncement, but John had believed it.

John. Martin sighed, stirred desultorily at a coffee can filled with linseed
oil
and turpentine, then rested the can on the windowsill. For a long time he had
been so caught up with the sad and harrowing and noble and disgusting details
of
John's dying that he had been able to forestall thinking about his own
diagnosis. He had been grateful, in an awful way, that there had been
something
so horrible, so unavoidably and demandingly real, to keep him from succumbing
to
his own despair.

But all that was gone now. John was gone. Before John's death, Martin had
always
had a sort of unspoken, formless belief in an afterlife. The long shadow cast
by
a 1950s Catholic boyhood, he guessed. But when John died, that small hidden
solace had died too. There was nothing there. No vision of a beloved waiting
for
him on the other side. Not even a body moldering within a polished mahogany
casket. Only ashes, ashes; and his own death waiting like a small patient
vicious animal in the shadows.

"Shit," he said. He gritted his teeth. This was how it happened to Ariel. She
gave in to despair, or dreams, or maybe she just pretended it would go away.
She'd be lucky now to last out the summer. At the thought a new wave of grief
washed over him, and he groaned.

"Oh, shit, shit, shit," he whispered. With watering eyes he reached for the
can
full of primer on the sill. As he did so, he felt a faint prickling go through
his fingers, a sensation of warmth that was almost painful. He swore under his
breath and frowned. A tiny stab of fear lanced through him. Inexplicable and
sudden pain, wasn't that the first sign of some sort of degeneration.? As his
fingers tightened around the coffee can, he looked up. The breath froze in his
throat and he cried aloud, snatching his hand back as though he'd been stung.

They were there. Dozens of Them, a horde of flickering golden spots so dense
They obliterated the wall behind Them. Martin had seen Them before, but never
so
close, never so many. He gasped and staggered back, until he struck the edge
of
the easel and sent the canvas clattering to the floor. They took no notice,
instead followed him like a swarm of silent hornets. And as though They were
hornets, Martin shouted and turned to run.
Only he could not. He was blinded, his face seared by a terrible heat. They
were
everywhere, enveloping him in a shimmering cocoon of light and warmth, Their
fierce radiance burning his flesh, his eyes, his throat, as though he breathed
in liquid flame. He shrieked, batting at the air, and then babbling fell back
against the wall. As They swarmed over him he felt Them, not as you feel the
sun
but as you feel a drug or love or anguish, filling him until he moaned and
sank
to the floor. He could feel his skin burning and erupting, his bones turning
to
ash inside him. His insides knotted, cramping until he thought he would faint.
He doubled over, retching, but only a thin stream of spittle ran down his
chin.
An explosive burst of pain raced through him. He opened his mouth to scream,
the
sound so thin it might have been an insect whining. Then there was nothing but
light, nothing but flame; and Martin's body unmoving on the floor.

Moony waited until late afternoon, but Jason never came. Hours earlier,   Moony
had glanced out the window of her cottage and seen Gary Bonetti running   up the
hill to Martin's house, followed minutes later by the panting figure of   Mrs.
Grose. Jason she didn't see at all. He must have never left his cottage   that
morning, or else left and returned by the back door.

Something had happened to Martin. She knew that as soon as she saw Gary's
stricken face. Moony thought of calling Jason, but did not. She did nothing,
only paced and stared out the window at Jason's house, hoping vainly to see
someone else enter or leave. No one did.

Ariel had been sleeping all day. Moony avoided even walking past her mother's
bedroom, lest her own terror wake her. She was afraid to leave the cottage,
afraid to find out the truth. Cold dread stalked her all afternoon as she
waited
for something-- an ambulance, a phone call, anything-- but nothing happened.
Nobody called, nobody came. Although once, her nostrils filled with the acrid
smell of cigarette smoke, and she felt Jason there. Not Jason himself, but an
overwhelming sense of terror that she knew came from him, a fear so intense
that
she drew her breath in sharply, her hand shooting out to steady herself
against
the door. Then the smell of smoke was gone.

"Jason?" she whispered, but she knew he was no longer thinking of her. She
stood
with her hand pressed against the worn silvery frame of the screen door. She
kept expecting Jason to appear, to explain things. But there was nothing. For
the first time all summer, Jason seemed to have forgotten her. Everyone seemed
to have forgotten her.

That had been hours ago. Now it was nearly sunset. Moony lay on her towel on
the
gravel beach, swiping at a mosquito and staring up at the cloudless sky, blue
skimmed to silver as the sun melted away behind Mars Hill. What a crazy place
this was. Someone gets sick, and instead of dialing 911 you send for an obese
old fortuneteller. The thought made her stomach churn; because of course
that's
what her mother had done. Put her faith in fairydust and crystals instead of
physicians and chemo. Abruptly Moony sat up, hugging her knees.
"Damn," she said miserably

She'd put off going home, half-hoping half-dreading that someone would find
her
and tell her what the hell was going on. Now it was obvious that she'd have to
find out for herself. She threw her towel into her bag tugged on a hooded
pullover and began to trudge back up the hill.

On the porches of the other cottages she could see people stirring. Whatever
had
happened, obviously none of them had heard yet. The new lesbian couple from
Burlington sat facing each other in matching wicker armchairs, eyes closed and
hands extended. A few houses on, Shasta Daisy sat on the stoop of her tiny
Queen
Anne Victorian, sipping a wine cooler, curled sheets of graph paper littering
the table in front of her.

"Where's your room?" Shasta called.

Moony shrugged and wiped a line of sweat from her cheek. "Resting I guess."

"Come have a drink." Shasta raised her bottle. "I'll do your chart."

Moony shook her head. "Later. I got to get dinner."

"Don't forget there's a moon circle tonight," said Shasta. "Nine thirty at the
gazebo."

"Right." Moony nodded, smiling glumly as she passed. What a bunch of kooks. At
least her mother would be sleeping and not wasting her time conjuring up
someone's aura between wine coolers.

But when she got home, no one was there. She called her mother's name as the
screen door banged shut behind her, waited for a reply but there was none. For
an instant a terrifying surge raced through her: something else had happened,
her mother lay dead in the bedroom. . .

But the bedroom was empty, as were the living room and bathroom and anyplace
else where Ariel might have chosen to die. The heady scent of basil filled the
cottage, with a fainter hint of marijuana. When Moony finally went into the
kitchen, she found the sink full of sand and half-rinsed basil leaves. Propped
up on the drainboard was a damp piece of paper towel with a message spelled
out
in runny magic marker.

 *
Moony: Went to Chapel
Moon circle at 9:30
Love love love Mom.

"Right," Moony said, disgusted. She crumpled the note and threw it on the
floor.
"Way to go, Morn."

Marijuana, moon circle, astrological charts. Fucking idiots. Of a sudden she
was
filled with rage, at her mother and Jason and Martin and all the rest. Why
weren't there any doctors here? Or lawyers, or secretaries, or anyone with
half
a brain, enough at least to take some responsibility for the fact that there
were sick people here, people who were dying for Christ's sake and what was
anyone doing about it? What was she doing about it?

"I've had it," she said aloud. "I have had it." She spun around and headed for
the front door, her long hair an angry black blur around her grim face.
"Amanda
Rheining, you are going to the hospital. Now."

She strode down the hill, ignoring Shasta's questioning cries. The gravel bit
into her bare feet as she rounded the turn leading to the chapel. From here
she
could glimpse the back door of Jason and Martin's cottage. As Moony hurried
past
a stand of birches, she glimpsed Diana standing by the door, one hand resting
on
its crooked wooden frame. She was gazing out at the Bay with a rapt expression
that might have been joy or exhausted grief, her hair gilded with the dying
light.

For a moment Moony stopped, biting her lip. Diana at least might understand.
She
could ask Diana to come and help her force Ariel to go to the hospital. It
would
be like the intervention they'd done with Diana's ex-husband. But that would
mean going to Martin's cottage, and confronting whatever it was that waited
inside. Besides, Moony knew that no one at Mars Hill would ever force Ariel to
do something she didn't want to do; even live. No. It was up to her to save
her
mother: herself, Maggie Rheining. Abruptly she turned away.

Westering light fell through the leaves of the ancient oak that shadowed the
weathered gray chapel. The lupines and tiger lilies had faded with the dying
summer. Now violet plumes of liatris sprang up around the chapel door beside
unruly masses of sweet-smelling phlox and glowing clouds of asters. Of course
no
one ever weeded or thinned out the garden. The flowers choked the path leading
to the door, so that Moony had to beat away a net of bees and lacewings and
pale
pink moths like rose petals, all of them rising from the riot of blossoms and
then falling in a softly moving skein about the girl's shoulders as she
walked.
Moony cursed and slashed at the air, heedless of a luna moth's drunken
somersault above her head, the glimmering wave of fireflies that followed her
through the twilight.

At the chapel doorway Moony stopped. Her heart was beating hard, and she spat
and brushed a liatris frond from her mouth. From inside she could hear a low
voice; her mother's voice. She was reciting the verse that, over the years,
had
become a sort of blessing for her, a little mantra she chanted and whispered
summer after summer, always in hopes of summoning Them --

 *
"With this field-dew consecrate Every fairy take his gait And each several
chamber bless, through this palace, with sweet peace; Ever shall in safety
rest,
and the owner of it blest."

At the sound, Moony felt her heart clench inside her. She moved until her face
pressed against the ancient gray screen sagging within its doorframe. The
screen
smelled heavily of dust; she pinched her nose to keep from sneezing. She gazed
through the fine moth-pocked web as though through a silken scrim or the Bay's
accustomed fog.

Her mother was inside. She stood before the wooden altar, pathetic with its
faded burden of wilting flowers and empty bottles and Jason's cigarette butts
scattered across the floor. From the window facing the Bay, lilac-colored
light
flowed into the room, mingling with the shafts of dusty gold falling from the
casements set high within the opposing wall. Where the light struck the floor
a
small bright pool had formed. Ariel was dancing slowly in and out of this, her
thin arms raised, the long heavy sweep of her patchwork skirt sliding back and
forth to reveal her slender legs and bare feet, shod with a velvety coat of
dust. Moony could hear her reciting. Shakespeare's fairies' song again, and a
line from Julian of Norwich that Diana had taught her:

All will be well, and all will be well, and all manner of things will be well.

And suddenly the useless purity of Ariel's belief overwhelmed Moony.

A stoned forty-three-year-old woman with breast cancer and a few weeks left to
live, dancing inside a mined chapel and singing to herself. Tears filled
Moony's
eyes, fell and left a dirty streak against the screen. She drew a deep breath,
fighting the wave of grief and despair, and pushed against the screen to
enter.
When she raised her head again, Ariel had stopped.

At first Moony thought her mother had seen her. But no. Ariel was staring
straight ahead at the altar, her head cocked to one side as though listening.
So
intent was she that Moony stiffened as well, inexplicably frightened. She
glanced over her shoulder, but of course there was no one there. But it was
too
late to keep her heart from pounding. She closed her eyes, took a deep breath
and turned, stepping over the sill toward Ariel.

"Mom," Moony called softly. "Mom, I'm --"

Moony froze. In the center of the chapel her mother stood, arms writhing as
she
held them above her head, long hair whipping across her face. She was on fire.
Flickers of gold and crimson ran along her arms and chest, lapped at her
throat
and face and set runnels of light flaming across her clothes. Moony could hear
her shrieking, could see her tearing at her breast as she tried to rip away
the
burning fabric. With a howl Moony stumbled across the room-- not thinking,
hardly even seeing her as she lunged to grab Ariel and pull her down.

"Mom!"

But before she could reach Ariel she tripped, smashed onto the uneven floor.
Groaning she rolled over and tried to get back up. An arm's-length away, her
mother railed, her voice given over now to a high shrill keening, her flapping
arms still raised above her head. And for the first time Moony realized that
there was no real heat, no flames. No smoke filled the little room. The light
that streamed through the picture window was clear and bright as dawn.

Her mother was not on fire. She was with Them.

They were everywhere, like bees swarming across a bank of flowers. Radiant
beads
of gold and argent covered Ariel until Moony no longer saw her mother, but
only
the blazing silhouette of a woman, a numinous figure that sent a prismatic
aurora rippling across the ceiling. Moony fell back, horrified, awe-struck.
The
figure continued its bizarre dance, hands lifting and falling as though
reaching
for something that was being pulled just out of reach. She could hear her
mother's voice, muted now to a soft repetitive cry-- uh, uh! -- and a very
faint
clear tone, like the sustained note of a glass harmonica.

"Jesus," Moony whispered; then yelled, "Jesus! Stop it, stop --"

But They didn't stop; only moved faster and faster across Ariel's body until
her
mother was nothing but a blur, a chrysalis encased in glittering pollen, a
burning ghost. Moony's breath scraped against her throat. Her hands clawed at
her knees, the floor, her own breasts, as her mother kept on with that soft
moaning and the sound of the Light Children filled the chapel the way wine
fills
a glass.

And then gradually it all began to subside. Gradually the glowing sheath fell
from her mother, not fading so much as thinning, the way Moony had once read
the
entrance to a woman's womb will thin as its burden wakes to be born. The
chiming
noise died away. There was only a faint high echo in Moony's ears. Violet
light
spilled from the high windows, a darker if weaker wine. Ariel sprawled on the
dusty floor, her arms curled up against her chest like the dried hollow limbs
of
an insect, scarab or patient mantis. Her mouth was slack, and the folds of
tired
skin around her eyes. She looked inutterably exhausted, but also somehow at
peace. With a cold stab like a spike driven into her breast, Moony knew that
this was how Ariel would look in death; knew that this was how she looked,
now;
knew that she was dead.

But she wasn't. As Moony watched, her mother's mouth twitched. Then Ariel
sneezed, squeezing her eyes tightly. Finally she opened them to gaze at the
ceiling. Moony stared at her, uncomprehending. She began to cry, sobbing so
loudly that she didn't hear what her mother was saying, didn't hear Ariel's
hoarse voice whispering the same words over and over and over again

"Thank you, thank you, thank you! --"

But Moony wasn't listening. And only in her mother's own mind did Ariel
herself
ever again hear Their voices. Like an unending stream of golden coins being
poured into a well, the eternal and incomprehensible echo of Their reply --
"You are Welcome."

There must have been a lot of noise. Because before Moony could pull herself
together and go to her mother, Diana was there, her face white but her eyes
set
and in control, as though she were an ambulance driver inured to all kinds of
terrible things. She took Ariel in her arms and got her to her feet. Ariel's
head flopped to one side, and for a moment Moony thought she'd slide to the
floor again. But then she seemed to rally. She blinked, smiled fuzzily at her
daughter and Diana. After a few minutes, she let Diana walk her to the door.
She
shook her head gently but persistently when her daughter tried to help.

"You can follow us, darling," Diana called back apologetically as they headed
down the path to Martin's cottage. But Moony made no move to follow. She only
watched in disbelief -- I can follow you? Of course I can, asshole! -- and
then
relief, as the two women lurched safely through the house's crooked door.

Let someone else take care of her for a while, Moony thought bitterly. She
shoved her hands into her pockets. Her terror had turned to anger. Now,
perversely, she needed to yell at someone. She thought briefly of following
her
mother; then of finding Jason. But really, she knew all along where she had to
go.

Mrs. Grose seemed surprised to see her (Ha! thought Moony triumphantly; what
kind of psychic would be surprised?) But maybe there was something about her
after all. Because she had just made a big pot of chamomile tea, heavily
spiked
with brandy, and set out a large white plate patterned with alarmingly
lifelike
butterflies and bees, the insects seeming to hover intently beside several
slabs
of cinnamon-fragrant zucchini bread.

"They just keep multiplying." Mrs. Grose sighed so dramatically that Moony
thought she must be referring to the bees, and peered at them again to make
sure
they weren't real. "Patricia-- you know, that nice lady with the lady friend?
--
she says, pick the flowers, so I pick them but I still have too many squashes.
Remind me to give you some for your mother."

At mention of her mother, Moony's anger melted away. She started to cry again.

"My darling, what is it?" cried Mrs. Grose. She moved so quickly to embrace
Moony that a soft-smelling pinkish cloud of face powder wafted from her cheeks
onto the girl's. "Tell us darling, tell us --"

Moony sobbed luxuriously for several minutes, letting Mrs. Grose stroke her
hair
and feed her healthy sips of tepid brandy-laced tea. Mrs. Grose's pug wheezed
anxiously at his mistress's feet and struggled to climb into Moony's lap.
Eventually he succeeded. By then, Moony had calmed down enough to tell the
aged
woman what had happened, her rambling narrative punctuated by hiccuping sobs
and
small gasps of laughter when the dog lapped excitedly at her teacup.
"Ah so," said Mrs. Grose, when she first understood that Moony was talking
about
the Light Children. She pressed her plump hands together and raised her
tortoiseshell eyes to the ceiling. "They are having a busy day."

Moony frowned, wiping her cheeks. As though They were like the people who
collected the trash or turned the water supply off at the end of the summer.
But
then Moony went on talking, her voice growing less tremulous as the brandy
kicked in. When she finished, she sat in somewhat abashed silence and stared
at
the teacup she held in her damp hand. Its border of roses and 'cabbage
butterflies took on a flushed glow from Mrs. Grose's paisley-draped Tiffany
lamps. Moony looked uneasily at the door. Having confessed her story, she
suddenly wanted to flee, to check on her mother; to forget the whole thing.
But
she couldn't just take off. She cleared her throat, and the pug growled
sympathetically.

"Well," Mrs. Grose said at last. "I see I will be having lots of company this
winter."

Moony stared at her uncomprehending. "I mean, your mother and Martin will be
staying on," Mrs. Grose explained, and sipped her tea. Her cheeks like the
patterned porcelain had a febrile glow, and her eyes were so bright that Moony
wondered if she was very drunk. "So at last! there will be enough of us here
to
really talk about it, to learn --"

"Learn what?" demanded Moony. Confusion and brandy made her peevish. She put
her
cup down and gently shoved the pug from her lap. "I mean, what happened? What
is
going on?"

"Why, it's Them, of course," Mrs. Grose said grandly, then ducked her head, as
though afraid she might be overheard and deemed insolent. "We are so fortunate
-- you are so fortunate, my dear, and your darling mother! And Martin, of
course
-- this is a wonderful time for us, a blessed, blessed time!" At Moony's glare
of disbelief she went on, "You understand, my darling -They have come, They
have
greeted your mother and Martin, it is a very exciting thing, very rare -- only
a
very few of us --"

Mrs. Grose preened a little before going on, "-- and it is always so
wonderful,
so miraculous, when another joins us -- and now suddenly we have two!"

Moony stared at her, her hands opening and closing in her lap. "But what
happened?" she cried desperately. "What are They?"

Mrs. Grose shrugged and coughed delicately. "What are They," she repeated.
"Well, Moony, that is a very good question." She heaved back onto the couch
and
sighed. "What are They? I do not know."

At Moony's rebellious glare she added hastily, "Well, many things, of course,
we
have thought They were many things, and They might be any of these or all of
them or-- well, none, I suppose. Fairies, or little angels of Jesus, or tree
spirits-- that is what a dear friend of mine believed. And some sailors
thought
They were will-o-the-wisps, and let's see, Miriam Hopewell, whom you don't
remember but was another very dear friend of mine, God rest her soul, Miriam
thought They came from flying saucers."

At this Moony's belligerence crumpled into defeat. She recalled the things she
had seen on her mother -- devouring her it seemed, setting her aflame -- and
gave a small involuntary gasp.

"But why?" she wailed. "I mean, why? Why should They care? What can They
possibly get from us?"

Mrs. Grose enfolded Moony's hand in hers. She ran her fingers along Moony's
palm
as though preparing for a reading, and said, "Maybe They get something They
don't have. Maybe we give Them something."

"But what?" Moony's voice rose, almost a shriek. "What?"

"Something They don't have," Mrs. Grose repeated softly. "Something everybody
else has, but They don't --

"Our deaths."

Moony yanked her hand away. "Our deaths? My mother like, sold her soul, to --
to
--"

"You don't understand, darling." Mrs. Grose looked at her with mild,
whiskey-colored eyes. "They don't want us to die. They want our deaths. That's
why we're still at Mars Hill, me and Gary and your mother and Martin. As long
as
we stay here, They will keep them for us -- our sicknesses, our destinies.
It's
something They don't have." Mrs. Grose sighed, shaking her head. "I guess They
just get lonely, or bored of being immortal. Or whatever it is They are."

That's right! Moony wanted to scream. What the hell are They? But she only
said,
"So as long as you stay here you don't die? But that doesn't make any sense --
I
mean, John died, he was here --"

Mrs. Grose shrugged. "He left. And They didn't come to him, They never greeted
him. . .

"Maybe he didn't know-- or maybe he didn't want to stay. Maybe he didn't want
to
live. Not everybody does, you know. I don't want to live forever--" She sighed
melodramatically, her bosom heaving. "But I just can't seem to tear myself
away."

She leaned over to hug Moony. "But don't worry now, darling. Your mother is
going to be okay. And so is Martin. And so are you, and all of us. We're safe
--"

Moony shuddered. "But I can't stay here! I have to go back to school, I have a
life --"

"'Of course you do, darling! We all do! Your life is out there --" Mrs. Grose
gestured out the window, wiggling her fingers toward where the cold blue
waters
of the Bay lapped at the gravel. "And ours is here. " She smiled, bent her
head
to kiss Moony so that the girl caught a heavy breath of chamomile and brandy.
"Now you better go, before your mother starts to worry."

Like I was a goddamn kid, Moony thought; but she felt too exhausted to argue.
She stood, bumping against the pug. It gave a muffled bark, then looked up at
her and drooled apologetically. Moony leaned down to pat it and took a step
toward the door. Abruptly she turned back.

"Okay," she said. "Okay. Like, I'm going. I understand, you don't know about
these-- about all this -- I mean I know you've told me everything you can. But
I
just want to ask you one thing--"

Mrs. Grose placed her teacup on the edge of the coffee table and waved her
fingers, smiling absently. "Of course, of course, darling. Ask away."

"How old are you?"

Mrs. Grose's penciled eyebrows lifted above mild surprised eyes. "How old am
I?
One doesn't ask a lady such things, darling. But --"

She smiled slyly, leaning back and folding her hands upon her soft bulging
stomach. "If I'd been a man and had the vote, it would have gone to Mr.
Lincoln."

Moony nodded, just once, her breath stuck in her throat. Then she fled the
cottage.

In Bangor, the doctor confirmed that the cancer was in remission.

"It's incredible." She shook her head, staring at Ariel's test results before
tossing them ceremonially into a wastebasket. "I would say the phrase 'A
living
miracle' is not inappropriate here. Or voodoo, or whatever it is you do there
at
Mars Hill."

She waved dismissively at the open window, then bent to retrieve the tests.
"You're welcome to get another opinion. I would advise it, as a matter of
fact."

"Of course," Ariel said. But of course she wouldn't, then or ever. She already
knew what the doctors would tall her.

There was some more paperwork, a few awkward efforts by the doctor to get
Ariel
to confess to some secret healing cure, some herbal remedy or therapy
practiced
by the kooks at the spiritualist community. But finally they were done. There
was nothing left to discuss, and only a Blue Cross number to be given to the
receptionist. When the doctor stood to walk with Ariel to the door, her eyes
were too bright, her voice earnest and a little shaky as she said, "And look:
whatever you were doing, Ms. Rising -- howling at the moon, whatever -- you
just
keep on doing it. Okay?"

"Okay." Ariel smiled, and left.

"You really can't leave, now," Mrs. Grose told Martin and Ariel that night.
They
were all sitting around a bonfire on the rocky beach, Diana and Gary singing
"Sloop John B" in off-key harmony, Rvis and Shasta Daisy and the others
disemboweling leftover lobster bodies with the remorseless patience of
raccoons.
Mrs. Grose spread out the fingers of her right hand and twisted a heavy
filigreed ring on her pinkie, her lips pursed as she regarded Ariel. "You
shouldn't have gone to Bangor, that was very foolish," she said, frowning. "In
a
few months, maybe you can go with Gary to the Beach Store. Maybe. But no
further
than that."

Moony looked sideways at her mother, but Ariel only shook her head. Her eyes
were luminous, the same color as the evening sky above the Bay.

"Who would want to leave?" Ariel said softly. Her hand crept across the
pebbles
to touch Martin's. As Moony watched them she felt again that sharp pain in her
heart, like a needle jabbing her. She would never know exactly what had
happened
to her mother, or to Martin. Jason would tell her nothing. Nor would Ariel or
anyone else. But there they were, Ariel and Martin sitting cross-legged on the
gravel strand, while all around them the others ate and drank and sang as
though
nothing had happened at all; or as though whatever had occurred had been
decided
on long ago. Without looking at each other, Martin and her mother smiled,
Martin
somewhat wryly. Mrs. Grose nodded.

"That's right," the old woman said. When she tossed a stone into the bonfire
an
eddy of sparks flared up. Moony jumped, startled, and looked up into the sky.
For an instant she held her breath, thinking, At last! -- it was Them and all
would be explained. The Fairy King would offer his benediction to the united
and
loving couples; the dour Puritan would be avenged; the Fool would sing his sad
sweet song and everyone would wipe away happy tears.

But no. The sparks blew off into ashes, filling the air with a faint smell of
incense. When she turned back to the bonfire, Jason was holding out a flaming
marshmallow on a stick, laughing and the others had segued into a drunken
rendition of "Leaving on a Jet Plane."

"Take it, Moony," he urged her, the charred mess slipping from the stick. "Eat
it quick, for luck."

She leaned over until it slid onto her tongue, a glowing coal of sweetness and
earth and fire; and ate it quick, for luck.

Long after midnight they returned to their separate bungalows. Jason lingered
with Moony by the dying bonfire, stroking her hair and staring at the lights
of
Dark Harbor. There was the crunch of gravel behind them. He turned to see his
father, standing silhouetted in the soft glow of the embers.

"Jason," he called softly. "Would you mind coming back with me? I there's
something we need to talk about."

Jason gazed down at Moony. Her eyes were heavy with sleep, and he lowered his
head to kiss her, her mouth still redolent of burnt sugar. "Yeah, okay," he
said, and stood. "You be okay, Moony?"

Moony nodded, yawning. "Sure." As he walked away, Jason looked back and saw
her
stretched out upon the gravel beach, arms outspread as she stared up at the
three-quarter moon riding close to the edge of Mars Hill.

"So what's going on?" he asked his father when they reached the cottage.
Martin
stood at the dining room table, his back to Jason. He picked up a small stack
of
envelopes and tapped them against the table, then turned to his son.

"I'm going back," he said. "Home. I got a letter from Brandon today," -Brandon
was his agent-- "there's going to be a show at the Frick Gallery, and a
symposium. They want me to speak."

Jason stared at him, uncomprehending. His long pale hair fell into his face,
and
he pushed it impatiently from his eyes. "But --you can't," he said at last.
"You'll die. You can't leave here. That's what Adele said. You'll die."

Martin remained silent, before replacing the envelopes and shaking his head.
"We
don't know that. Even before, we--I-- didn't know that. Nobody knows that,
ever."

Jason stared at him in disbelief. His face grew flushed as he said, "But you
can't! You're sick -- shit, Dad, look at John, you can't just --"

His father pursed his lips, tugged at his ponytail. "No, Jason, I can."
Suddenly
he looked surprised, a little sheepish even, and said more softly. "I mean, I
will. There's too much for me to give up, Jason. Maybe it sounds stupid, but I
think it's important that I go back. Not right away. I think I'll stay on for
a
few weeks, maybe until the end of October. You know, see autumn in New England
and all. But after that --well, there's work for me to do at home, and--"

Jason's voice cracked as he shook his head furiously. "Dad. No. You'll--you'll
die."

Martin shrugged. "I might. I mean, I guess I will, sometime. But--well,
everybody dies." His mouth twisted into a smile as he stared at the floor.
"Except Mrs. Grose."

Jason continued to shake his head. "But-- you saw Them -- They came, They
must've done something--"

Martin looked up, his eyes feverishly bright. "They did. That's why I'm
leaving.
Look, Jason, I can't explain, all right ? But what if you had to stay here,
instead of going on to Bowdoin? What if Moony left, and everyone else -would
you
stay at Mars Hill? Forever?"

Jason was silent. Finally, "I think you should stay," he said, a little
desperately. "Otherwise whatever They did was wasted."

Martin shook his head. His hand closed around a tube of viridian on the table
and he raised it, held it in front of him like a weapon. His eyes glittered as
he said, "Oh no, Jason. Not wasted. Nothing is wasted, not ever." And tilting
his head he smiled, held out his arm until his son came to him and Martin
embraced him, held him there until Jason's sobs quieted, and the moon began to
slide behind Mars Hill.

Jason drove Moony to the airport on Friday. Most of his things already had
been
shipped from San Francisco to Bowdoin College, but Moony had to return to
Kamensic Village and the Loomises, to gather her clothes and books for school
and make all the awkward explanations and arrangements on her own. Friends and
relations in New York had been told that Ariel was undergoing some kind of
experimental therapy, an excuse they bought as easily as they'd bought most of
Ariel's other strange ideas. Now Moony didn't want to talk to anyone else on
the
phone. She didn't want to talk to anyone at all, except for Jason.

"It's kind of on the way to Brunswick," he explained when Diana protested his
driving Moony. "Besides, Diana, if you took her she'd end up crying the whole
way. This way I can keep her intact at least until the airport."

Diana gave in, finally. No one suggested that Ariel drive.

"Look down when the plane flies over Mars Hill," Ariel said, hugging her
daughter by the car. "We'll be looking for you."

Moony nodded, her mouth tight, and kissed her mother. "You be okay," she
whispered, the words lost in Ariel's tangled hair.

"I'll be okay," Ariel said, smiling.

Behind them Jason and Martin embraced. "If you're still here I'll be up
Columbus
Weekend," said Jason. "Maybe sooner if I run out of money."

Martin shook his head. "If you run out of money you better go see your
mother."

It was only twenty minutes to the airport. "Don't wait," Moony said to Jason,
as
the same woman who had taken her ticket loaded her bags onto the little
Beechcraft. "I mean it. If you do I'll cry and I'll kill you."

Jason nodded. "Righto. We don't want any bad publicity. 'Noted Queer
Activist's
Son Slain by Girlfriend at Local Airport. Wind Shear Is Blamed. '"

Moony hugged him, drew away to study his face. "I'll call you in the morning."

He shook his head. "Tonight. When you get home. So I'll know you got in
safely.
'Cause it's dangerous out there." He made an awful face, then leaned over to
kiss her. "Ciao, Moony."

"Ciao, Jason."

She could feel him watching her as she clambered into the little plane, but
she
didn't look back. Instead she smiled tentatively at the few other passengers
--
a businessman with a tie loose around his neck, two middle-aged women with
L.L.
Bean shopping bags -- and settled into a seat by the window.

During takeoff she leaned over to see if she could spot Jason. For an instant
she had a flash of his car, like a crimson leaf blowing south through the
darkening green of pines and maples. Then it was gone.

Trailers of mist whipped across the little window. Moony shivered, drew her
sweatshirt tight around her chest. She felt that beneath her everything she
had
ever known was shrinking, disappearing, swallowed by golden light; but somehow
it was okay. As the Beechcraft banked over Penobscot Bay she pressed her face
dose against the glass, waiting for the gap in the clouds that would give her
a
last glimpse of the gray and white cottages tumbling down Mars Hill, the
wind-riven pier where her mother and Martin and all the rest stood staring up
into the early autumn sky, tiny as fairy people in a child's book. For an
instant it seemed that something hung over them, a golden cloud like a
September
haze. But then the blinding sun made her glance away. When she looked down
again
the golden haze was gone. But the others were still there, waving and calling
out soundlessly until the plane finally turned south and bore her away, away
from summer and its silent visitors -- her mother's cancer, Martin's virus,
the
Light Children and Their hoard of stolen sufferings -- away, away, away from
them all, and back to the welcoming world.