Spoonfed - A Scarytober Story

Every October I write a spooky story based on an Inktober prompt. This year I asked my Instagram followers for help creating my list. Here's the story that's come out of it, enjoy!

I was born under a waning gibbous Moon. It wasn’t a waxing crescent like my cousin’s, the first shred of light in the Moon’s cycle, nor a first quarter like my great-aunt’s. My Moon isn’t a pretty thing to draw in the corner of a piece of paper, it isn’t anything poets write about. A waning gibbous Moon doesn’t get a still shot in a movie or photographed for a magazine. It’s a phase, the sixth to be exact, right after the Full Moon. The moment when the Moon starts to get smaller, when the Moon gets less bright.

My mother assures me this is a good thing. She told me that being born under a waning gibbous Moon meant I was strong and reflective, soft and determined. She thinks these contradictions make me well-rounded when I only see myself as a paradox, unsure of how to act, how to feel, or what I wanted in any given situation of my life.

She told me this like it was a planned thing like my cousin’s Moon, like her sister’s, like her own, but I was never planned. I was never even a thought until I was discovered, a quick wet heartbeat nestled deep inside that she felt too guilty to get rid of.

If she feels I’m still not happy with her answer, my mother will say that I could have been born under a New Moon instead with no light at all.  I’ll nod along, pretend to agree. I often lie to my mother now. it makes her happy to think I’m content with what I have instead of the dreamy disappointment she got.

If I had any choice in the matter, I’d have been born during an Eclipse or a Harvest Moon. I’d even take the New Moon. I think being born in the shadow of the Moon is at least more positive than when it starts to fade. I’d take anything waxing, even another gibbous Moon because at least a waxing Moon gets fuller instead of smaller like mine.

My cousin likes to talk about her waxing crescent claw of a Moon like it makes her important, and I wish I didn’t believe that it did.

I know the Moon I was born under means nothing, that it doesn’t hold any of the significance that my cousin or my great-aunt, or the rest of my family believes it does. If our phases really mattered, my mother’s Blue Moon would have made her more special than she ever ended up being. Not that I, or anyone else in the family would ever tell her that.

No one knew what I was when I was born. Because of the Moon, because I was a secret for so long, because when I came screaming into the world the Gilmore clan was more shocked than anything at my arrival. When my mother tells the story she explains it all as a series of facts: that sometimes these things skip a generation, that none of it is as common as it used to be, and how difficult it is to tell in infancy. How more than anything they needed to be sure.

She tells me that we used to follow the Moon better and that our family’s lack of faith is what’s turned us stagnant. None of the other Gilmore’s believe this, but my mother finds comfort in spirituality even though her claims are often wrong. I recognize that after her own disappointment she needs something to believe in, and who am I to take away her only comfort?

They waited a year to see what I was. It’s an old test, simple. My great-aunt took out one of the silver spoons from the hutch, the ones lined up and waiting for moments like these. My mother says our ancestors used to go through spoons by the dozen, but now we have a hutch full, waiting for a baby to be born to use them.

As birthdays go, I’m told my first was as normal as any other. I sat in my highchair with a small pink hat, more fascinated with the wrapping paper than any of the toys I’d been given. My aunt brought out my small pink cake, my great-aunt, and a scattering of other relatives sang me “Happy Birthday” as my mother helped me blow out my candle. Then my great-aunt handed my mother the spoon. She scooped a bit of pink icing onto the silver and placed it into my waiting mouth.

It's easy for me to imagine the spoon shaking in her grip, not out of nervousness of what could happen, but the fear that nothing would.

My screams were immediate. High-pitched wails filled the cottage as my mouth blistered and burned, the silver spoon pushed further in to prove that I lived up to the Gilmore name with this affliction. The spoon was eventually taken out of my mouth and I was held and cooed over, celebrated more for passing the test.

I still have the spoon. It’s framed and hangs just over my bed. My cousin keeps hers in a similar frame over her doorway, her mother the same. Our great-aunt pushed a hole through the handle of hers and wears it around her neck. My mother’s sits back in the hutch. She was too afraid to use it on me.

Sometimes I’ll wake up and swear my mouth is sore, do an inventory from within. Tongue over teeth, poking into my gums and the soft of my cheeks sure I can taste blood and feel the bubbled skin from the allergy. But there’s no way I can remember that, a one-year-old’s mind could never hold onto to something so painful. Pain lives in dreams.

It’s that dream, or the memory of a dream, a memory of a moment that makes me wake up earlier than I should with the taste of blood in my throat. My mouth collects with spit that I swallow down in cleansing. There is no blood, there never is, only it’s memory. But I still follow the ritual, feel for scabs and scars long since healed and stare up at my ceiling, at the grey light that fills my room.

There’s a crack that runs in the middle of my ceiling, stopping just before the back wall and the door to my room. It’s always been there; I don’t know the cause. My mother says the cottage is so old that it’s filled with cracks, so small they go ignored until they’re too big to like the one in my ceiling. The groans and creaks of the floorboards from our footsteps and the subtle shifting of the walls on an especially windy night confirms this.

Sometimes I imagine the whole roof coming down on me, the weight of the cracked ceiling on my ribs, everything covered in a fine white dust. There’s a comfort in imagining the worst-case scenario and, somehow, surviving it.

I sit up in bed and look to my window, blind drawn, a frame of yellow sun around it’s edges. I look at the clock on my bedside table which confirms I’m up too early. I always try to adjust my sleep schedule the week of a Full Moon, momentarily make myself nocturnal so that the night itself isn’t a waste but I’ve been sleeping poorly. I keep waking up with the sun and the taste of blood before forcing myself to sleep and wake with the Moon instead.

The Blood Moon is tonight. I should force myself back to sleep, but I hear footsteps in the kitchen, take that as a reason to get up. I hope that it’s my cousin. As annoying as she is, Aphra is better company than her mother who never stops talking. But I’d rather her than Great-Aunt Aella who takes these things too seriously, or my mother who will just mope like she always does. If I had a choice, I’d wish for Aphra’s brother Adam, but he sleeps like the dead. I won’t see him until Moon up.

In the old days, the Gilmore’s believed that this was a women’s issue. The men left us to ourselves as they locked themselves away in the other cottage and let us be one with the Moon, but things change. Binaries don’t hold the same importance that they once did. Great-Aunt Aella put up some difficulty at first with Adam, but he had long ago passed the test, has always been one with the pack. When Aphra and I threatened to leave the Gilmore’s and start our own pack her mind miraculously opened, and the three of us got a glimpse of the type of power we might hold one day.

I’m disappointed but unsurprised to find my mother in the kitchen instead of Adam. Her mouth twists when she sees me before flattening out again. I pretend not to notice as I walk towards her to the counter. She cuts up a raw chicken, thin strips for our dinner tonight. Still bloody. I run my teeth over my tongue, swallow down the memory of blood as my mother tells me that I should get back to bed. I nod in agreement, lie and tell her I wanted to see her. We stand in silence a foot apart, listening to the sound of her knife against the cutting board, her knife through the chicken, the pull of its flesh as she separates what the knife can’t cut.

She asks me if us girls are ready for tonight. Pack, I correct her, and her mouth twists again and I feel a snarl fit itself around my own, easier achieved tonight. We both fix our faces before the other can see, pretend that each of us has said what the other wants to hear. Some minds take time to open. I’m grateful that Great-Aunt Aella keeps hold of my mother’s tongue since her own spoon couldn’t scold it for her.

The knife against the board is a lulling, nighttime sound that makes my eyelids heavy. The pull of chicken flesh makes me hungry. I grab a strip and my mother tsks without looking up at me, the knife inches from my fingers. The chicken doesn’t taste as good as it will tonight, the flesh chewy and a pain for my dull teeth. When my gnawing proves too tiresome, I swallow it down, the chicken sticking in my throat as it makes its slow passage down to my stomach.

I don’t need her to hide a meal for me. Aphra, Adam, and I will be hunting anyways. It makes sense for Great-Aella whose joints hurt and Aunt Alida who is lazy. But every Full Moon my mother preps our meals and hides them around the grounds for us to find. It is, ultimately, a useless job. But my mother likes to keep herself busy since she can’t join us for the night, and the rest of the Gilmore’s are kind enough to humour her.

Aylin needs to sleep, Aunt Alida calls and my mother and I both flinch towards the doorway where I leaned moments before. Aunt Alida stands there, hair askew, darkness under her eyes. She has the best ears in the family, we are always too loud for her.

My mother looks down ashamed, I didn’t call for her. I meet my Aunt’s eyes, I had a nightmare. My mother and my Aunt look at each other and then to me, Of what? I look to the ground, the chicken a thick lump in my throat. I don’t remember, I lie, and they continue staring at me. I wonder if Aunt Alida can smell the lie on me. Adam would. Instead she snorts and walks back down the hall to her room where she slams the door. I look to my mother but she’s staring at the chicken, cutting as if I’m not in the kitchen with her, as if I never came in at all.

I leave without goodbye and wander down the hall, looking into Aphra’s room as I walk towards my own. She always keeps her door open. I don’t know why, it seems vulnerable, an invitation to let anyone in. Knowing Aphra it is one. She believes herself to be the strongest of the pack, our someday leader but the shreds of her right ear prove that to be false.

I overreacted; I’ll admit that. Last month, Aphra had stolen my meal again, and she knew it was mine. My mother packs our meals individually, similar in content but each with their own unique treat, and Aphra was eating my treat. She’s always done this, ever since we first became one with the Moon, but this time I was angry. Or rather, I’ve always been angry when she’s done this, but this time I reacted.

I have no interest in being pack leader, neither does Adam, Aphra is the only one who cares. But she’s always been too aggressive, too vicious. I think she’d bring about the end of the Gilmore’s if she ever became leader, and I’m willing to take on the role if it will stop her bloodbath.

Aphra lies on her stomach, snoring softly against her pillow, peacock feathers braided into her long, thick hair. It makes me stop for a moment, tense, all those feathered-eyes watching me before I recognize them as harmless. I don’t know where she got them. Maybe she bribed one of the zookeepers in the city, maybe she ordered them from a magazine, maybe they aren’t even real, something from the craft store.

I know she’s angry at me for her ear, even though I apologized. But Great-Aunt Aella was proud of me for what I did, and Aunt Alida and Adam said she deserved it. Even my mother gave me a ghost of a smile as she was stitching up what remained of Aphra’s ear as the sun rose and we became ourselves again.

I can’t let her know she’s already scared me with her trick.

I don’t have a plan for Aphra. I’ve had more than enough time to come up with one, there’s no excuse for why I haven’t except that I don’t want to fight her. I don’t go through life with my hackles raised, a low growl always ready in my throat, not like Aphra. I knew the risk when I attacked her last month, but one can only handle treat thievery for so long.

Throughout the last month my mother would ask me to accompany her on walks. She’d take me to various areas of our property: the corn field, the still stream, near the other cottage where my uncles used to spend their time but is now reserved for distant cousins. My mom had been preparing the second cottage for tonight, we always have relatives during a special Moon like this.

It took me longer than I’d like to admit to realize what she was doing. We walked in silence most of the way, listening to the crunch of leaves under our feet, the soft song of the stream, until we were out of range of what Aunt Alida and Aphra could hear, and she would speak. I wondered how she’d learned how far Aunt Alida could hear, Aphra kept her talents close to her chest, Adam kept nothing hidden which made him more dangerous. I can never trust someone who has no secrets.

She’d ask me what my plan was for the Blood Moon, and I’d tell her I didn’t have one, that I hadn’t thought that far ahead. Really though, I was refusing to think about it. The Blood Moon was one of those needle pricking thoughts, always on my mind that I tricked myself into thinking I could bury away with ignorance.

It annoyed my mother. Whenever she took me for a walk she’d ask if I had thought of anything, what my plans were for dealing with Aphra. Despite Aunt Alida agreeing that her daughter was to blame for last month’s violence, she was still annoyed at Aphra’s shredded ear. Aunt Alida wouldn’t do anything, my mother assured, but Aphra most certainly would. If anything, my mother said, Aphra was planning to spill as much blood as she could for the Blood Moon.

I continued to tell my mother I wasn’t thinking about it, that I thought Aphra and I were getting along better now, which was a lie. It was true that my cousin was smiling and talking to me more. At night she’d offer to braid my hair or brew me a cup of tea. I declined all her offers with a smile, seeing through the kindness to the fermented anger underneath. I couldn’t trust that she wouldn’t poison the tea or braid curses into my hair.

Blood on the Blood Moon isn’t an uncommon thing, death is even more likely. It was during a Blood Moon that Great-Aunt Aella had killed her sister, my Grandmother Avira, and taken her daughters as her own. During another she’d taken her late husband, Great-Uncle Alec, whose mind had been poisoned by those in the city who told him he was unmanly and cowardly for taking a wolf for a wife. It was during a Blood Moon that Aunt Alida killed her husband, Aron, accidentally when she had mistaken him for a deer.

These deaths don’t cause any great grief, or if they do they’re well hidden. Killing is a natural, expected thing during the Blood Moon. Spilling our own blood is just a sign of dominance, a way to bless the land with the blood of the weak to prove our own strength. I don’t know if it’s the Blood Moon itself that makes us more bloodthirsty or if it’s just an excuse we tell ourselves to cull the weakest of the Gilmore’s from our tree.

We respect the dead, of course. Their blood soaks our ground, it keeps the strongest of our Gilmore’s alive. We’ll light a candle in the old cottage, we’ll say a blessing, we’ll sing a song. We’ll scatter the bodies with flowers or dried leaves, whatever we have available. But we don’t mourn, we don’t grieve. This isn’t a sad occasion, only a reminder of what will happen if we aren’t strong.

Aphra wants to kill me. It isn’t a secret, and if or when she does, there will be no sadness over my departure. My mother will not weep, the Gilmore’s will not woe. If anything, it will be expected for what I did to her last month, an example of my lack of preparation. It will be because I wasn’t planned like the rest of my cousins, that I’ve always been unpredictable. They’ll light a candle in the old cottage, they’ll say a blessing, sing a song, scatter dried leaves on my body. No one will mourn for me.

I grab the knob to Aphra’s room and turn it slowly, shut it and turn it back so that she won’t wake up. My cousin sleeps lighter than her brother, not so light as Aunt Alida. I think I’ll be fine until she wakes at Moon up.

It isn’t a solution, isn’t even really a plan but she’ll know it was me who shut it. She’ll take it as an invitation. It will probably send her into a rage. I wonder if she’ll notice the door just as her body begins to shift or right before. If it’s before she’ll blame me for whatever damage she causes to her room. She’s already gone through two bed frames this year; Great-Aunt Aella has told her she’ll have to sleep on the floor like a stray if she breaks another.

It's a stupid thing to do when I don’t have any plan. My only hope is that something comes to me in the few hours I have left until Moon up, a vision, or even a plan of what I should do with Aphra. I imagine my mind is a bowl that I put Aphra and the Blood Moon into, stir the two together and hope that when it’s baked a solution will come.

The closed door is a taunt to nothing, but Aphra doesn’t need to know that. My mother’s the only one who does, and she might think I do have a plan that I’m keeping from her. She gets paranoid sometimes, convinced that I’m keeping secrets from her, that I’m shunning her when really she knows all of mine.

I can’t blame her though. I know that Aunt Alida used to tell her everything, even though my mother was useless. My mother isn’t the only Gilmore like this. I have other aunts, other cousins, distant or otherwise. I don’t know their names. It’s not like they’re shunned from the family, but often they estrange themselves from us. There isn’t much they can do during our time with the Moon, and often it’s more dangerous for them to be near us during that time.

I don’t know what changed with my mother and her sister, if it had to do with their growing up or if it happened after their own mother was killed. I know there were great hopes for my mother, with her Blue Moon. She’s treated as a sort of pet during the Full Moon, no one’s ever tried to hurt her which I’m grateful for.

I know my mother thinks she’s cursed. She often prays to the Moon, in all it’s phases. She wears a thin silver chain around her neck in hopes it will blister and bleed, that the Moon will bless her with the Gilmore’s gift.

My head is too crowded with my mother. I push her from my mind even though I can still hear her chopping at the chicken in the kitchen. I put Aphra’s head and the Blood Moon into my brain and close my eyes, ask the Moon to give me an answer.

The Moon answers me the way she always does: with pain. I forgot to change out of my nightclothes before going back to sleep and can already feel them ripping at the seams. I try wriggling out and leave them in a husk at the end of my bed. I’ve never had the patience for sewing and Great-Aunt Aella has told me my clothing is my responsibility for the remainder of my changes after Aunt Alida tired of sewing together my shreds.

I scream, I howl, both at the same time. It’s an inhuman sound, not animal either but something in-between. The Gilmore’s have always been between creatures, it’s why the label of human or wolf is insulting. Why be one when we are both?

Of course, there are benefits to presenting as human, one that in a colonized world would be foolish to ignore. So we pass when we can, reap the rewards that it gives us. There are perks to presenting as wolf as well, but our bodies are hardly that of an ordinary wolf. Even our smell, though similar, gives us away. Still, there are some animals in the woods nearby who choose to bargain with us and the protection we give. The Gilmore’s have found many benefits in befriending a variety of prey. But the change is the hardest, it always is. As a being whose existence relies on the between, certain anatomical changes need to occur.

The average adult human body holds between 206 and 213 bones, the average adult gray wolf 302, so in the change we gain twenty-three more to even out the difference. This is the part I have the most trouble with, the crack of my bones to make new ones, the stretch and curl of my limbs as they accommodate for extra space. I hate it, I always cry and feel all the weaker for it.

Next comes the teeth, which Aphra struggles with. If I had been smarter, I may have drugged and pulled some of hers out before tonight. Turn her jaw into a semi-useless thing. Ten more teeth are added to each of our mouths, they hide in our jaws the rest of the month and make our gums bleed when they emerge the way our spoons once did.

Our nails sharpen, curl, and darken. Our skulls reshape, forming a snout to hold all our extra teeth. Our tongues grow long and take away our speech. Not that our tongues can say more than our growls, the flicks of our now long ears, or the angry swish of our new tails can say better. We scream, we howl through it all until it ends, until the Moon takes away our pain the way she gave it to us and our night can begin.

My favourite cousin Anura never struggled with the change. She enjoyed every moment, she never even cried. She was the most devout of any of the Gilmore’s, even more so than my mother who taught her most of the prayers. She wanted to pay respect to the Moon and our ancestors in a great way during one of her changes. She travelled to Alaska for the winter solstice.

She wanted to change under the Full Moon on the longest night of the year with the Aurora Borealis dancing above her. But the Gilmore’s don’t come from a place as cold as there, and despite the thickness of her fur it didn’t warm her well enough once she changed. We saw the story in the paper with a picture of her body, of the strange creature found under the Moon. None of the Gilmore’s talk about Anura anymore.

I breathe deeply, swallow down the blood from my gums and feel my own hot breathe against my face. I ease up slowly when I think the pain is finished, ears flat against my newly formed skull. I look towards my bedroom door and find it ajar. A low growl rumbles in my throat as I start my hunt for Aphra.

Run out of my room, hip hitting the door, think about the crack in my ceiling growing larger.  Run through the kitchen where I smell my mother, smell the chicken, smell the blood and lemon that she used to clean it all away. Nose wrinkles at lemon, a growl and spit, the smell too strong. My mother typically runs herself a lemon bath the week leading up to the Full Moon to keep her safe from us.

Too much lemon in the kitchen. Run through the kitchen and out the open door where Great-Aunt Aella sits on the porch gnawing on the legbone of the chicken my mother prepared for her, a small pile of blueberries between her long paws she saves for later. I feel her eyes as I run past but know she isn’t a threat. She’s too old to spill anymore blood, too old now to kill.

Run past Aunt Alida who lies nearby on her side, snout inside a glass jaw of peanut butter, chicken untouched. She always eats mother’s treat first. I’ve caught her at a moment of weakness, head inside the jar, distracted by her treat. If she was my target I could get a fair bite to the back of her neck, but she hears me. My Aunt squeezes her head out of the jar, shakes her head, muzzle dotted with peanut butter, and she shows me her teeth. It might be a smile; it might be a smirk. She keeps her secrets; she doesn’t make a sound.

Adam and Aphra, the scents similar but different enough to tell apart. Adam’s closed room smell zigzags towards the stream, he prefers to spend most Full Moons swimming in the stream. I don’t know if he has blood on his mind for the Blood Moon, if he and Aphra are planning something in sibling devotion to get back at me.

Pause at the new smells, Gilmore’s old and young who’ve visited for tonight. Our land is the biggest, family has travelled from far away to celebrate. I see their shapes hulk towards the woods where prey is more plentiful and wonder what they must think of mother’s made meals for us. It must look weak; we must look pampered. Spoiled. House-trained. I wonder if they will try to usurp one of us. It would be disrespectful to kill an elder like Great-Aunt Aella on the Blood Moon, but one of her kin. Adam, Aphra, or me.

Aphra again, her smell of dust. A growl from my throat, ears swivel for the slinking sound of her, my ears poor compared to hers. No Aphra. Look down at my feet, long and clawed and find a peacock feather. Nose to the ground find another, and another, and another, a trail of them leading to the cornfield.

Run to the corn, the shush of the stalks between my body, try hard not to knock them down. Find the lemon smell of my mother from when she hid my dinner here earlier, wrinkle my nose, the smell of dusty Aphra close by.

Follow it deeper through the corn as this body, this mind takes over. Howling to the Blood Moon so she knows I’m coming.

Run through the corn, slink through the stalks, dirt imbedding itself into my claws.

Pause, listen, taste the air. Dust. Aphra. Follow.

The strength of my senses always disorients me when I change. It shocks me onto one side as I work to reorient myself back to in between. To balance. Balance is everything, balance is crucial.

Creep, quiet, through the corn. Sniff. Lemon. Mother. Sniff. Dust. Aphra. Follow.

Balance is hard.

Sniff. Dust. Aphra. Corn. Leaves. Dirt.

My mother used to bring me to the cornfield before the Full Moon as a child. She wanted me to know it with these eyes so it would be familiar in my other body. She called it hide and seek, I would count to a hundred and she would hide, make me find her. And I would try. I hated disappointing my mother, but I’ve never known how to access my wilder senses in my tame body the way Aphra and most of the Gilmore’s can. My mother said I needed to try harder, and I know that she was right.

I would try to find my mother, really I would. Sometimes I could pick up a wiff of her lemon smell before the wind took it away. I’d squeeze through the corn stalks, try to find her footprints but she would be lost to me. The corn stalks mirrored each other, seemingly going on for eternity, and I would imagine myself stuck and lost forever.

I would cry, and my mother would find me. My mother never gets lost in the corn, never gets lost anywhere. It’s a shame she never got the chance to live up to her potential.

Sniff. Lemon. Mother. Sniff. Dust. Aphra. Follow.

Lemon. Sting. Mother. Lemon. Sting. Mother.

My mother’s scent is everywhere among the corn. I kneel down and roll my head in the dirt, fill my nostrils with the earth smell, take a large sniff of a cob of corn picked clean by the ravens, count the dents to focus.

I’ve lost Aphra. She’s crafty like this, her scent will be a strong and powerful thing so that I’ll think it’s close and then it will disappear. I don’t know how she does it. She’s an excellent hunter that way, which doesn’t bode well for me. I’m a fine enough tracker, but never of Aphra. She has this habit of leading me onward and then attacking at the last instance.

Quiet. Listen. Taste the air. Lemon. Sting. Lemon.

My mother always hides my meal in the cornfield, an echo from my failed training, but even still her lemon smell is stronger than it usually is. She must have had some extra lemon baths while we were sleeping for the Blood Moon. There are relatives we haven’t seen in ages; she has to keep herself safe from those who only remember her vaguely.

She always chooses a different spot and I always find my meal. Not before Aphra, until now. I hope now. I won’t let her get my meal before me this time. Though that could be part of her plan, lure me into a false sense of safety, watch me eat from among the stalks and pounce. Her jaws tight around their throat, silencing my howl. My blood will bless the ground and the Gilmore’s will sing a song, light a candle, praise the Moon, and bury me in the woods with all the others.

Quiet. Quiet. Taste the air. Lemon. Sting. Lemon. Chicken.

I think my mother would prefer Aphra for a daughter. I’ll never know what my mother would have been like if her Blue Moon had blessed her the way my Waning Gibbous did. She never wanted children, a secret to no one. When she was old enough she estranged herself from her family until I stuck myself inside her belly, unwanted and ignored, until her fear brought her home and she was pressured to keep me.

Chicken. Lemon. Sting. Lemon. Chicken. Chicken. Chicken. Treat.

I know she is proud enough of me that I am what she can never be, that she was afraid I’d come out just like her. It’s why she named me Aylin. Her faith, and the fear that comes with it, motivating most of what she does. But I see the way she looks at Aphra, how the pride in her eyes morphs to pity when she looks at me. At all the things Aphra is good at that I’m not. A low growl sounds in my throat that I force to quiet and I try to imagine that I emerge from the chrysalis of my self-loathing and become the version of myself my mother deserves.

Lemon. Chicken. Lemon. Lemon. Chicken. Chicken. Chicken. Mango. Chicken. Mango. Treat. Mango. Treat.

My mother makes us work for our meals, or at least she makes me work. She digs mine in a shallow grave amongst the corn and though the lemon smell of her stings my nose and waters my eyes it’s the smell of the food, the chicken but mostly the mango that causes me to salivate. The drool hangs sticky from my jaw and pools into the dirt of the cornfield.

Dig. Dig. Dig. Dig. Sniff. Dig. Sniff. Dig. Dig. Dig. Dig.

She ties it in some of the scrap fabric, some casualties from our former changes. The cloth has been washed but I recognize my own shreds. My mother has turned my scraps into something delicately beautiful. The old fabric, once a clawed mess is embroidered with different phases of the moon, with stars, the sky.

I try to be delicate when I open it. My thumb has moved further up my wrist making it difficult, but the claws help. I put one gently through the knot and tug, the urge to massacre her fine packaging strong. I have a vision of myself opening my jaws wide, of using my big teeth to swallow it whole. It’s what Aphra would do, she has no care for my mother’s handiwork. But I’m not Aphra.

I forgot to check for Aphra.

The thought of her is an icepick to my heart. A growl haunts my throat but I quiet it, swivel my ears. I hear the whisper of the corn; I smell the dirt. Taste the air. No dust. No Aphra. A stale smell like she was here but is gone, but that could be a trick. I don’t know how she got so good at hunting.

I eat my meal on alert, ears up, muscles tense. I alternate bites of chicken and bites of mango, both too good to eat one over the other, impossible for me to decide what to save for last. The raw chicken shreds easily in my jaws, tastes better than it did before when I spoke to my mother in the kitchen. Blood down my throat, accompanied by the sweetness of the mango that pairs surprisingly well with it.

It would be more enjoyable if I wasn’t waiting for Aphra.

It didn’t used to be like this between us, or at least I don’t think it was. It’s impossible to remember everything clearly. All we remember is our version of events and even then to recall it is a memory of a memory until it becomes so faded around the edges it’s hard to know if it even existed at all.

But here are some memories I think I have of Aphra:

As little pup girls growing into ourselves, too big paws, still short tails, one ear larger than the other. Too young to hunt, we’d splash in the stream with Adam before he told us his true name and run in circles around Great-Aunt Aella until she became annoyed and nipped at our ankles and we ran into the corn stalks again. I would be afraid and start whimper as the stalks seemed to close in around us and Aphra would lead us out, back towards the cottage.

Outside of the Moon and into the sun. Ivy crept along the cottage walls and Aphra would try to climb it to reach the roof. She’d call me a coward if I didn’t join her, say I was a Gilmore in name only until I complied. We’d grab ivy vines in our fingers and try to reach ourselves higher only for the green to crumble in our hands.

Playing hide and seek in the Moon and the sun to sharpen our skills, Aphra always being able to find me until one day I hid in the woods under a rotting log for three hours waiting for her. The glee in my heart that I had finally fooled her, coming out with ticks burrowed into my legs and skull that my mother had to pry out as Aphra bathed in the stream, knowing all along where I was. She said it was a waste of her talent to hunt for prey that offered itself up to her.

Aphra cracking the glass to my framed spoon and trying to force it into my mouth so she could prove I was a Gilmore. Great-Aunt Aella catching her and threatening to expel her. Aunt Alida begging her in a throat clogged with tears to let her stay. All of this heard behind the closed door of my room as my mother cleaned up the glass, reframed my spoon, and rocked me in her lap.

Competition is healthy amongst family. I see echoes of it between my mother and Alida, though Alida has more salt she can rub into my mother’s wound than she ever can back. Still though, I hold onto the memories of Aphra so tightly they turn into the dust that she smells like, wondering if they were ever real or just what I wished could be.

I finish my meal, lick my snout, pick at the missed at pieces with my tongue and swallow them down. Satiated. Without hunger, my thoughts are clearer, crisper. I can finally focus.

I look up at the Moon. It isn’t fully bloody yet, just the groove of a fingernail piercing skin, but I can see it getting larger. It’s what makes the Moon so powerful, so generous, that she allows us to watch as the sun shadows her face. How we turn our gazes to the ground when her shadow passes the sun. It’s a sign of respect.

My mother taught me how to respect the Moon from a young age. She told me to listen to her phases, that the prayers on my Birth Moon would be heard clearer than any others I said. She told me to respect the Moon’s dark side just as much as her light, that just because she couldn’t be seen didn’t mean she couldn’t hear me. I pray to her for protection for the rest of the night, even though it will probably go up mumbled since I wasn’t born during an Eclipse.

I shake the crumbs from the embroidered cloth my mother used to wrap my food, twist and tie it into a bracelet around my wrist. It’s something I’ve done since I was a child, something after so many years that still brings a smile to my mother’s face when she sees me decorated with her work. Very little brings a smile to her face anymore.

I relinquish the thought and start filling the hole back up. A mess or two is expected when we changed, but Great-Aunt Aella tried to instill a note of cleanliness into ourselves. It would just have to be filled tomorrow when I was tired instead of now. If I forgot one of the men might roll their ankles and hurt themselves.

When he was young, Adam once dug a few holes near the forest and forgot to fill them. One of our greater, distant uncles fell and died. We couldn’t tell if it was a quick death or slow, the animals had gotten to him by then. It took us a few weeks to find him. Great-Aunt Aella never lets him forget that. Adam is the cleanest of all of us now.

It’s only when the hole is half-filled that I remember to hunt for my mother’s other treat. When I got older, and having failed to find her in hide and seek, my mother started hiding trinkets for me in the corn. Pennies, charms, small shining things I’d admired from her jewelry box that she thought might turn me into a better hunter. I proved to be more motivated this way, not because I wanted them, but because I was afraid of losing them forever.

I dig out the dirt I filled in the hole with. Dig deeper. Dig. Lemon. Dig. Lemon. Dig. Dig. Dig.

Nothing.

My teeth squeak as I grit them together, a loudening growl in my throat as I run through the stalks.

I should calm myself down. No good comes from anger as hot and fermented as the kind roiling inside of me. It’s this anger that mauled Aphra last month, that shredded her ear that even my mother’s stitches couldn’t put back together. She tore out the stitches when they proved useless, hid her ear behind her hair until the next Full Moon. Tonight. The Blood Moon. I don’t think she’ll hide it tonight. It’s surprising she’s hiding from me at all, all things considered.

Lemon. Dirt. Corn. Run. Lemon. Dirt. Corn. Run. Corn. Dirt. Dust. Dust. Dust. Run. Run. Run.

I do try to calm myself, honestly I do, but I’ve become used to boxing up my anger. It’s only since the last Full Moon that I’ve let it out, and since then I’ve tried hard to box it up again. It’s getting harder though, feeling something that I haven’t ever really let myself feel, the release of it. I don’t like what I did to Aphra, despite the approval from the rest of the Gilmore’s. But I did enjoy the loose-limbed feeling of my body afterwards, once the anger left.

Dust. Dust. Dust. Grass. Dust. Dust. Dust. Wood.

I emerge from the corn, stand on my hind legs crouched and sniff the air, rid the corn smell from my nostrils, shake the loose stalks that have fallen on my pelt. The growl continues bubbling in my throat, I try to imagine it flattening, disappearing, but the sound simmers and drags itself out of my throat. My heartbeat is loud in my ears and painful in my chest. I’m aware of each beat, swear I can feel the sludge of anger pump itself through my body.

My body stiffens as I look to the ground a few feet ahead, to a mass of eyeballs at the foot of the old elm. My growl grows louder and the eyes move, not blink, move and I lower myself to the ground, teeth barred. The eyeballs move and then Aphra is looking at me and if she could show amusement or laugh in this form she would. Instead she flicks her remaining ear and continues shredding her food between her teeth, tearing my mother’s handiwork with it.

Those damned peacock feathers.

I continue growling at her and she ignores me, another twitch from her good ear as her other lays flat and torn like the handkerchief she ruins with her teeth. She doesn’t see me as a threat, and that makes me angrier. I look to the porch of the cottage where Great-Aunt Aella watches with some interest, Aunt Alida beside her, ears perked. She warns Aphra with a growl of her own but my cousin dismisses her mother with another flick of her good ear.

When I’m a foot from her face I bare my teeth, I stare and she watches me curiously. She doesn’t seem afraid. I wish she was afraid. I lower myself and inch closer to her, try to commune all I can where my useless tongue fails.

I want my mother’s trinket. I want Aphra to stop. I want her to care for me again. I want her to know that I hate her. I want her to know that that could never be true. I want her to know that I will try to make my mother proud at any cost.

If she could laugh she would, but in this body she simply snorts in my face, shakes the golden fur and the peacock feathers with it so she looks like a many-eyed beast and I back away, frightened by the image and then dig my claws into the soft earth at my cowardice.

I bite at her. I find flesh.

Aphra whines. Aunt Alida barks at me and growls, Great-Aunt Aella sits unmoving beside her, her cloudy eyes appearing to see all of me. I smell the closed room scent of Adam before I hear him. He lopes over, hear the water drip drip drop from his pelt, the shush of his fur as he shakes himself dry. But he senses the tension, or maybe he just smells his sister’s blood. He runs over and sniffs at the blood and I step back. He finds the pinprick of blood on her muzzle and glares at me.

Sometimes I think there is pure evil inside of me, that there was never anything good at all. I think sometimes it’s always been there and it’s only now, since I let it out by mauling Aphra, that it’s infected me. I wonder if my mother sees this, I wonder if she and Aunt Alida and Great-Aunt Aella talk about it because my ears are too poor to hear them. I don’t know whether or not this version of me makes my mother proud.

Because I’m a coward, I run.

I run from the elm, I run from Aphra who’s whining. I run from Aunt Alida’s growls and Adam’s howls that reach the Moon. I hear the clawed feet of my distant relatives stop, I feel them watch me and I run from them. I run towards the woods, I run into the trees.

Through the branches I look up at the sky. The Moon is bloodier now, half-filled and growing. My eyes adjust to the darkness of the forest. I sniff and smell nothing, none of my relatives are here and if they are they’ve gone deeper, their scents faint and unimportant.

If I concentrate, I can hear the yips and barks between Aphra’s family. I imagine Great-Aunt Aella watching all of this from the porch with her cloudy eyes.

Where is my mother?

I sniff but I know my mother’s lemon smell isn’t here. It was in the cornfield, strong and stinging from when she hid my meal but I haven’t seen her which is unusual. The Gilmore’s know to stay away from her, my mother knows how to keep herself safe. But we haven’t had a Blood Moon in a long while, it’s been even longer since we’ve had a Blood Moon on Samhain. The first in my lifetime, maybe the first for most of the living Gilmore’s aside from Great-Aunt Aella.

It's what makes this Blood Moon so important, why blood needs to be spilled. It’s not that we kill on Samhain, but it’s our New Year. It’s a time of celebration, a reminder that winter is coming. It’s when the veil between our worlds thin, and paired with the Blood Moon a perfect time for a kill.

I need to find my mother.

Sharpening my claws against the trunk of the old oak beside me, bark chipping off onto the cold mud that squelches between my toes. It hasn’t rained for a week but it’s been so cold out that the ground refuses to dry.

Finding my mother is the only thought in my head. Well, that and blood. I imagine a fiercer version of myself guarding my mother as the other Gilmore’s circle around her. I imagine my teeth long, reflecting red in the Moonlight, sinking into the throats of any who dare come near her. I imagine the tearing sound as my now sharpened claws pierce through their skin. I imagine doing all these monstrously fantastical things until the Moon lowers from the sky and the sun comes up, when I will change again and properly able to count the dead at my feet.

I wonder if it would make my mother proud.

It’s a useless thought, one of fiction. I’ve never been good in battle, aside from Aphra’s torn ear it was always me my mother was stitching up after the Full Moon. Hiding isn’t an option, and even if I knew where my mother was it isn’t something she’d be fond of doing. If any of the Gilmore’s wanted her dead she wouldn’t put up a fight. She would walk herself over to whoever wanted her dead and kneel before them, honour herself as a sacrifice for the Moon and let her blood soak into the ground. We’d sing a song, we’d light a candle, we’d thank the Moon for her blessing.

My mother isn’t dead.

I’d know if she was dead.

Sniff. Oak. Sniff. Mud. Sniff. Sniff. Sniff. Sniff.

Lemon.                                   

Her scent is stale, a minor sting to my nose, a faint trail in the air. I doubt she came this far; she’s never liked the woods. She doesn’t know them as well as the corn. She’d be too easy to hunt here, I think that’s why she avoids it. If she came here at all it was to hide something, Adam’s meal, or maybe Aphra’s. She isn’t here now. She hasn’t been here for a long while.

Sniff. Dirt. Sniff. Mud. Squelch between my toes. Step. Crunch. Leaf. Sniff.

The old dead decay smell of leaves, one of my favourites. I breathe in to calm myself, I can’t let my anger cloud me the way it did with Aphra just now, the way it did with Aphra last month, the way it will ruin me if I let it.

I stop. I listen. My ears aren’t as good as Aunt Alida’s but I should be able to hear something, but it’s silent. It’s a held breath just before a scream, a foot hovering over a stair that isn’t there. None of the distant Gilmore’s are galivanting on the grounds anymore, Adam doesn’t call me for a duel. Aunt Alida doesn’t bark, Great-Aunt Aella doesn’t huff.

Silence.

I think they’re waiting for me.

An ambush, perhaps, or maybe they have my mother. It isn’t something Great-Aunt Aella would want to do but for the Blood Moon, but she might. I don’t think Aunt Alida would pause to think about killing her sister, an eye for an eye for what I did to Aphra even though I was in the right. But that was before, that wasn’t tonight. I attacked her without reason, though if this were a court I could give my reason to the Blood Moon. But the Gilmore’s have never been ones for traditional justice.

I would know if my mother was dead.

I have no proof that she’s even been taken or that that’s what their plan is. My mind does this, it stumbles and falls away from me. I never know if the Moon is speaking to me the way she does my mother or if I’m creating visions of my own making. It seems stupid to avoid any type of warning, whether self-made or divinely given.

I sniff. The lemon smell of my mother is faint but trailing, blowing on the wind from the cornfield.

The wind fades, so does the lemon, and I’m left with the smell of the leaves, the mud, the metal smell of the cold. Another gust from where the cottage sits, the mingled odor of the Gilmore’s waiting for my arrival.

My gut tells me to run to the cornfield, instinct tells me to wait. For what I don’t know. I’ve never been good at trusting myself. I look at the Moon. She bathes me in red.

I don’t know why my mother is the way she is, why she isn’t like the rest of us. My mother was born early on a Blue Moon, a blessed thing, but she was meant for a Half Moon. Cousin Anura told me that Gilmore’s who weren’t born on their Moon were cursed, a belief my mother daily tried to make up for.

Anura’s sister Artemesia is the least spiritual of all of us. Her mind works differently. She says the Moon has little to do with what we are and that it’s more a thing of genetics. She says it has something to do with our blood, believes that a defect exists in some of us, but she doesn’t know why. She’s been trying to find other Gilmore’s like my mother, she wants to test my mother’s blood, but she refuses. My mother doesn’t want to anger the Moon any further than she already has.

In the past, Gilmore’s like my mother were given up. Great-Aunt Aella used to tell me stories at night about the weak ones, how they were tossed away. They left them in the woods like Romulus and Remus in hopes that a wolf mother may teach them something, but most of them just ended up dead. She usually said these stories when my mother was in the doorway, so she could hear.

But Aunt Alida’s ears were better. She’d come in and tell me that Great-Aunt Aella’s stories were false, the things of shadows and nightmares, that in reality most of the Gilmore’s like my mother were given to human homes and that they live human lives. But that sounds like too much of a happy ending for someone born so unlucky.

I don’t know why Great-Aunt Aella never tried to kill my mother, why she always treated her like a pet. Maybe it was because Aunt Alida wouldn’t let her. My mother and Aunt’s affections towards each other are a thing I don’t understand, something that borders on a tender annoyance. Sometimes I think they would kill for each other, sometimes I think they would just kill each other.

I think they’ll kill my mother tonight.

I think of my mother. I see her preparing our meals for the Blood Moon, for every Full Moon, not because we need it but because she cares. I think of her braiding Aphra’s hair when she was small, of teaching Adam how to swim, and how she tried to teach me to be better than I am. I see her open the hutch of spoons when she thinks I’m asleep, placing one on her tongue and waiting for it to blister and bleed. I see her doing the same with my spoon when Aphra broke the frame, the same actions, her mouth smooth and clean.

I walk towards the cottage. It’s what my mother would want me to do.

I feel the mud turn hard between my feet, prickle into grass, still wet from the days of rain. The grass wipes at the soles of my feet, kissing them clean as I walk towards my family. Their eyes glow red in the Moon, just as she does.

I keep my pace slow though my heartbeat is gunfire in my chest and ears. I focus on who I am now, like this. I feel the claws of my feet tangle in the brittle grass. I smell the woods, the leaves, the stream. Open my mouth and let the smells bathe on my tongue, swallow them down so they are part of me. I listen to the animals in the forest. Their squeaks and chitters and hoots. The flap of wings on the wind, a crack of a tree limb, teeth on bark, nails against skin. I feel the fur on my body as if flattens right way and wrong against the wind. It warms my body; it covers every inch of me. I wish my body was always covered in fur.

If I had any wish for the Moon to grant me, it would be this. I wish I could be just like this. Always.

Great-Aunt Aella, the old crone, keeps her spot on the porch, watching me. It’s an awful thing to call her, but it’s only in my head. I say lots of things in my head that I’d never say out loud and truthfully I don’t feel all that bad about calling Great-Aunt Aella a crone. There’s the guilt, of course, knowing that I shouldn’t, but there’s a truth to it to. She looks more like a crone without the Moon, with her sagging skin and brown eyes turned clouded blue. Right now she just looks old, her fur silver and white, a tiredness that sits around her eyes.

The rest of the Gilmore’s watch. There’s no growling as I pad towards them, no barred teeth aside from Aphra’s. They watch me with their Moon-red eyes and the air feels like static. I listen for the chop of the chicken knife from my mother’s hand, sniff for the smell of her but am only greeted with that of the Gilmore’s who are here. The dust, the closed rooms, the smell of old blood begging to be spilled.

I don’t know where my mother is, and that thought makes me lonely.

I stand in front of Aphra, a foot away, and her silent snarl grows larger. I see the cut I gave to her snout, a small thing, really. She won’t need stitches. Aphra being dramatic for the sake of being dramatic, or maybe she’s just angry that I managed to strike her again. It was stupid to challenge her , but I can’t help the pride that fills me at fooling Aphra twice. I think it would make my mother proud, wherever she is.

A strong wind from the corn and I smell her lemon, fresh. My ears twitch and my head turns towards the field when Aphra’s growl starts. I turn towards her and see she’s close, back up and growl back, try to make myself look bigger. I’ve always been taller than Aphra, but Aphra’s smallness has only made her fiercer.

Her lips stretch as she shows more of her teeth in what could be a grin without the Moon. I look to Great-Aunt Aella on the porch and she seems to see everything and nothing all at once. Aphra is flanked by Adam and Alida, faces like stone to me. The bodies of the distant Gilmore’s press close, creating a warmth from themselves and their clouds of breath.

Aphra chuffs, it sounds like a laugh, then wiggles something on her finger. She twists and it gleams silver despite the blood of the Moon and she tosses it at my feet. I sniff at it, lemon, and grab it clumsily with my long fingers and claws. It’s a signet ring with the Gilmore Crest on it. A spoon, the Moon in all her phases circled around.

My mother’s. My grandmother’s.

I slip it on my finger with a growl and run towards the corn, listen to Aphra howl as she calls our relatives to follow me.

Hard ground. Squelch. Mud. Corn. Rustle. Leaves. Lemon. Lemon. Lemon.

The ring adjusts to my finger. My mother told me that her mother never used to take it off, that some distant relative had made her the ring so that no matter how she looked she could wear the ring, silver-plated so it never burned. I’ve never seen her take it off. In her lemon baths or cutting chicken in the kitchen it sits around the third finger of her right hand. She would never leave it as a trinket for me to keep and find, unless she knew she was going to die.

My mother is going to die.

Run through the corn, run through the sheaths instead of the path that my mother tried to teach me. I don’t want to be neat. I want the stalks to fall around me, all of them so that I can find my mother. I imagine her kneeling, her knees sinking into the mud as she stares up at the Blood Moon, her eyes turning red. I can see her mouth moving, almost hear her whispered prayers as she waits for the end.

My mother is not going to die.

Keep running, cobs falling, mice scurrying around me in fear. The rest of my relatives may be following me. I should be more aware of this, should listen. I should have seen who was there, learned to memorize the square-jaws and turnip-faces, the different smells of all of them so I could protect my mother and I better.

 I’m useless.

I keep running, follow the lemon trail of her, feel her signet ring fit comfortably on my finger as if it will lead me to her. I would have thought Aunt Alida would have taken the ring once their mother died but she must have let my mother keep it as a kindness knowing my mother would never be like her, knowing she needed something to make her feel special. I wonder if Aunt Alida wants it back. I wonder if Aphra wants it instead.

I look up at the Blood Moon and pray, wonder if she can hear me, wonder if my eyes are just as red as the others.

I’ve never been chased like this before. It’s different than the play hunts with Adam and Aphra’s. With Adam it was always a joke. Whenever he’d try to find me, and he would always find me, a playful nip of the air and we’d chase. I was never able to find him. Adam was the only one who could ever find Aphra, and even that was only when she let him.

When Aphra hunted, even if it was Adam and I, it was never for play, always for sport. She always found me first, would bite and leave blood. I would only sometimes need stitches. No matter how hard my mother tried to teach me I could never hide from Aphra, she always found me first. Adam had some of her talents for hiding, but she would always find him.

She is merciless.

I focus on my feet against the mud, ignore the bruises that will come from the stalks and corn that hit my body. Once the Moon sets, my body will turn into a mottled purple mess, but if I can save my mother it will be worth the pain. It always is, or it’s supposed to be. That’s the type of things poets write about, sacrifice and the nobleness of it. The martyred suffering we bear for those we love. To suffer is to love, an almost holy thing.

I wonder if this is Aphra’s plan, if this is what she’s been up to for the past month since I sliced her ear. It would be a good show of dominance to kill my mother on the Blood Moon, the arguable weakest link of our group. She’d be going against Great-Aunt Aella, against her own mother, but more importantly against me. Killing my mother would establish her as a leader, may cast Great-Aunt Aella into retirement. She’s too old to put up any sort of fight against Aphra. We all know Aphra would win.

The thought turns my insides into a gnarled and twisted thing I wish I could untangle. Instead I continue running, following my mother’s own twisted trail, knowing that the sting of her scent, the pain of it is just a show of love.

I wonder if anyone else in my family is bothered by my mother’s smell. I wonder if it’s just more proof of my weakness. It’s only now, only when I’m like this that I find the smell of her hurt. But no one else seems to have any trouble tracing her scent. No one else seems to be stopping every few feet to burrow their faces in the dirt and mud, to ease the sting of the citrus.

I stop to do just that and when I lift my head it’s silent. The thunder of the Gilmore’s large, clawed feet brought to us by the Moon is gone from the first chase. My ears swivel, listen behind me, to the side, in front of me.

I don’t see anyone. No flash of fur, no flicker of blood eyes, no claws beckoning me closer, no large teeth pushing me away. It’s quiet. But I know they’re here.

Their old, dusty smell tries to tamp out the lemon. Though their steps are careful they aren’t silent like I thought. I hear the slow pad of their soles against the mud, the drag of their claws with each step. The corn shushes around their bodies as they snake through it. The Gilmore’s are shadows, ready to snuff my mother out.

Aylin.

It’s my mother’s voice. I wait a moment, sure it’s in my head, certain it’s imaginary. Aylin. Again. One who belongs to the moon. My name isn’t a scream, it isn’t a groan, it isn’t a desperate plead. My name is a whisper among the sheaths.

I’ve found her. I sniff. Lemon. I walk deeper into the corn.

Usually, I enjoy the fog. I like to watch it from my window, I like to see it creep from the woods towards the cottage. Sometimes I imagine it creeping in through the crack in my roof and filling my room, hiding me from Aphra, from Great-Aunt Aella, from Adam and Aunt Alida. Sometimes I imagine the fog hiding me from my mother.

It’s different now, in the cornfield. I didn’t see the fog creeping, was creeping myself until I found myself blind in it. I stop, I listen. The corn moves, whether from Gilmore’s or the wind is unclear, most likely both. Their dusty smell slinks around me as does the wet smell of the fog. My mother’s lemon smell is stronger than anything though. It makes me sneeze.

The Blood Moon shines bright, it turns the fog red. It’s like I’m walking through blood.

Cousin Anura would say that the Blood Moon sent the fog to stop me from finding my mother, that the fog is the Moon speaking to me, answering my prayers. The Blood Moon is telling me that I need to remain blind, that I am not meant to find my mother. Or I think that’s what she’d say. When my mother and Anura got talking I’d tune them out, too much spiritual talk made my head hurt.

Her sister, Artemesia, would tell me the fog isn’t a sign, that the Blood Moon isn’t speaking to me. That the Moon doesn’t speak to anyone. The fog is here because the temperature has changed, because the day was cold and the night is warm as blood. I always enjoyed Artemesia’s science talk but listening too deeply always feels like a sin.

I don’t know how to interpret the fog. I don’t know anything. My waning gibbous Moon makes me an inconclusive thing, neither here nor there, a perpetual paradox. I like to blame my Moon for my indecision, for my inability to not know what I think, to not know any of my own thoughts.

Anura and Artemisia’s interpretations are like oil and water, they never mix. Believing in one over the other is a betrayal in some way, and it isn’t possible to believe in both. Faith and science never mix. But Anura has been dead longer, so that eases some of the trouble of choosing.

I walk blindly through the fog, slowly. I follow my mother’s trail of lemon, stopping every few feet to listen. The corn still rustles, the old smell of Gilmore’s hangs over me like a cloak. It’s like I’m playing hide and seek with my mother again, that I am failing her by not finding her despite all her clues.

But I will find her this time, I won’t let her down. Not when there are so many Gilmore’s hunting in tandem, not when she is at risk. I circle the signet ring around my finger. I will find my mother and I will save her, I will show my mother that I am exactly who she wishes I would be. My mother will smile at me and she will tell me that she is proud.

It’s such a pretty dream.

Suddenly my feet sink into the mud. It shocks me for a moment and I have to force my jaw shut to stop from yelping in surprise. My foot slurps out of the mud as I struggle it out, I place it gently on the surface and remove the other only to find I’ve started sinking again.

I’ve made it to the clearing. I don’t know what happened here, Great-Aunt Aella refused to acknowledge my question when I asked as a young thing. My mother told me it wasn’t something I should worry about, and Aunt Alida said I was too curious, that it would have been a blessing if I had been born dumber. All I know is that there is a clearing in the cornfield, a perfect circle where the corn won’t grow.

It’s the space where the ground gets too wet and the fungi springs up. Their little red, white, and brown heads flatten easily under me as my feet suck and slurp to the centre. The corn and everything else dies in the mud but the fungi relish in it. They’re more alive than anything else in this clearing. Everything except my mother.

I see her standing in the centre, her back to me. She wears her white cloak, the one she wears every Full Moon but tonight it looks just as bloody as everything else under the Blood Moon does. My heart moves painfully in my chest when I see her. I feel my shoulders slacken, the adrenaline start to drain from my limbs, and tiredness flood my body.

She knows I’m here. She may have been able to hear me before I knew I’d found her. Despite her failings, my mother’s ears are almost as good as Aunt Alida’s, her tracking nearly as good as Aphra’s. She has the qualities of the Moon but lacks her blessing. If her Blue Moon had been as special as it should have been, my mother that would have been truly great Gilmore. Great-Aunt Aella may have even made her her successor, had things turned out differently.

My mother turns and in her hand she holds a silver knife. It winks red in the Moonlight. My ears perk up and I take a step towards her as she steps towards me through the fog, her lemon stench so strong it makes my eyes water. I step on another mushroom, the ground covered in fungus. Amanita, my mother, and the coincidence of it all that she is here with her namesake.

A coincidence. A foolish thought.

The fog thins like smoke around my mother as she walks towards me as if she has control over it. Her steps are slow but sure as I kneel before her. I take the signet ring off of my finger, place it in my palm and hold it out towards her. Her white cloak kisses the ground without dirtying itself.

Even with the fog everything about my mother turns red. It’s a colour that’s always suited her, this night more than others. She regards the ring, takes it from my palm and looks at it between two fingers before taking my hand and slipping the ring back on my finger. She hasn’t looked at me until this moment, not directly. After the ring slips snug over my finger our eyes meet, I imagine mine shine just as red as hers do.

In her hand my mother holds a silver knife that winks red in the Moonlight and from it’s smell I recognize it as the kitchen knife from earlier. A stale smell of blood and chicken linger to the blade that’s already tasted blood, that will taste more again shortly.

My mother has always been easy to read and still I’ve always had difficulties deciphering her. Aunt Alida calls her an open book, Great-Aunt Aella an eyesore. I wonder how many things have been obvious to me about her that I’ve failed to see, that I’ve forced myself to ignore.

My mother loves me. She does. I know my mother loves me just as much as I know I disappoint her.

In her hand my mother holds a silver knife that she places against my throat. I flinch when it does, not out of fear but from how it burns. I don’t know when my mother bought a real silver knife, but it’s clear she’s planned this for some time. My skin under the silver begins to burn, blister, and bubble the way my own mouth did all those years before when my silver spoon went in and showed her who I am.

I trace my tongue over my teeth, along the soft spaces of my mouth in dead memory.

In her hand my mother holds a silver knife that winks red in the Moonlight, that blisters the skin under my fur, that burns and burns and burns. I imagine the knife burning through my flesh, through the muscle, to the bone and burning through that as well.

My mother and I look into each other’s eyes, red on red. It’s impossible to talk to each other like this. We could speak at each other, I’d understand her and she’d only vaguely understand my grunts and whines and barks. It would be a useless conversation, no matter what my mother would tell me it wouldn’t change a thing.

I wait for the chaos I’ve been expecting. I feel the Gilmore’s around me, listen to their bodies hush through the corn. I wait for the growls, the barks, the howls. I wait for the blood and violence I imagined. But there is nothing, only soft silence.

I don’t see the ones behind me but I feel them stand there. Behind my mother, Aphra and Adam emerge from the corn, her eyes shine red with satisfaction as a peacock feather falls from her fur and sits at her feet. Adam looks through me. Aunt Alida sits beside her two children, her eyes solemn. And then Great-Aunt Aella walks through the corn. She takes her spot beside Aunt Alida, moves slowly and settles on the perimeter of the clearing. Her eyes are serious, curious despite the cataracted cloud of them. It is a gaze that knows everything, a look that tells you nothing. Great-Aunt Aella has always been full of secrets.

The Gilmore’s sit and stand in a circle around the clearing, watching, waiting for what will come next.

I was born under a waning gibbous Moon. Supposedly, this means that I am strong and reflective, soft and determined when really it just makes me a paradox, unsure of how to act, what to feel, or what I want in any given situation of my life.

I know what I want now.

I look up to the Blood Moon over my mother’s shoulder. She is the one I wish I was born under. If I was born under her I would be in touch with my shadow side and that would make me stronger. Or maybe, like many of my thoughts, it’s a wish like everything else. Maybe like its true meaning, being born under the Blood Moon would have always marked me for death.

It makes no difference now.

In her hand my mother holds a silver knife that winks red in the Moonlight, that burns and burns and burns against my flesh. I whimper and I hate the sound, know it makes me sound weak, know my mother will think I am weaker than she already thinks.

My mother looks at me with her red eyes wet and shining. She keeps the knife where it is, digs it harder against my throat and I swallow down the pain that wants to tear its way out of me.

In all things there’s a choice. In her hand my mother holds a silver knife, one that despite my own lack of skills could easily knock out of her grip. I could widen my jaw and bite her forearm, tackle her body into the mud until she choked on it. I could claw at her throat and feed the ground with her blood. I am stronger than her in this body, in both of my bodies. My mother is a frail bird-like thing with very little of the Moon inside of her. She would be easy to kill.

I look at my mother, fuzzy and red in the fog and sigh, surrender against the knife.

The fog thins to mist and I see my mother clearly. Her throat bobs as I relax into the knife. She speaks to me with her red wet eyes. I know that this is a test. I know how to pass it, what my mother would like me to do. The thought has gone through my mind, the different scenarios to get the right answer.

I know my mother loves me. She knows I feel the same.

But like all of my mother’s tests this is another one I’ll fail. My legacy reeked with another disappointment. Once the Moon sets I’m sure Aphra will laugh. Instead of letting me be forgotten like Anura she will speak of Aylin, the failed Gilmore who’s own pathetic Moon blessed her with gifts destined for my mother.

I think about my mother and I, from when I was rooted in her belly to the hunched creature in front of her. She gave me life, she can take it away. I could never kill my mother, but she has always had the power to kill me.

Her breath clouds in front of me as I relax against the knife. She licks her lips and looks up at the Blood Moon. I could rip out her throat. I could eat each one of her fingers. I relax against the knife and look at the Moon with my mother.

I wonder what the Moon told her. I wonder when. I wonder if I was more devout the Moon would have spared me or warned me about what was to come tonight. I wonder if I am stupid. I wonder if Aphra and Adam knew, if Aunt Alida and Great-Aunt Aella spoke with my mother about tonight. The way the Gilmore’s have their secrets, how my mother has always been filled with them but she has always known all of mine.

The Blood Moon is a circle of red bathing us all in her approval. I wonder if once it’s done my mother will take the newly bloodied knife and lick at the blood she gave me, if she will wait for her tongue to blister and burn from the silver. I wonder if after all this time my sacrifice to the Moon will give her that.

I just want her to be happy.

I finger the signet ring and wonder who will take it once I’m dead. Aphra will probably try but I can’t imagine my mother or Aunt Alida letting that happen. It will most likely be returned straight to my mother, back on her finger where it fits so perfectly.

I don’t know what will happen when I die. Or rather, I don’t know what will happen after. But here are the things I do know.

In her hand my mother holds a silver knife that winks red in the Moonlight and she will use that knife that prepared our meals to kill me. She will run the silver blade that already rests and burns against my throat until it tears at the skin, until it’s slit and my blood runs down from my neck, down my chest, matting my fur, and feeds the mud below me.

My blood will bless the land as it drains from my body and I will be an example to the Gilmore’s past, present, and future about what happens when we aren’t strong. My weak blood will soak the ground to prove the strength of the family. How we cull the weakest from our tree.

The Gilmore’s will have a funeral, we respect the dead, our family always does even if we don’t miss them. My blood will soak the ground and keep the strongest of our family alive, and that needs some sort of celebration. They’ll light a candle in the cottage, maybe fill my bedroom with them. The crack in my ceiling might even appear to move in the flickering of the candlelight. They’ll say a blessing, they’ll sing a song. They’ll clean my body but leave me in the clearing in the corn, scatter me with flowers, dried leaves, and corn husks. But no one will mourn for me, the Gilmore’s don’t grieve. My death won’t be a sad occasion, only a reminder of what happens when we aren’t strong.

My mother might miss me. My mother might grieve, holding this secret close to her heart like all her others. Maybe my mother will come visit my body in the clearing, watch my fur fall off and my skin shrink. Maybe my mother will sit watch over my decomposition, as my bones shine through and I become something truly organic, a feast for the worms and the other animals nearby. But that’s wishful thinking on my fault, it’s self-absorbed to hope someone will miss me once I’m dead.

I will die in this body, the one that I love, and it will be part of me forever like Anura in the ice under the Northen Lights. I wonder if the Moon will listen to my mother then. I wonder if the knife will burn in her hand, if her own spoon will blister her tongue, if after all these years her Blue Moon will mean something. I wonder if it’s more wishful thinking on her part.

My last thoughts are both quick and lingering as my mother avoids my eyes and presses the silver knife deeper into my throat.

Special Thanks To:

Melissa (Day 1), Meaghan (Days 2 - 7), RulitoDraws (Day 8), Carly (Day 9), Ashley (Days 10 - 12, 14 - 17, 19, 20, 23, 24), Laura (Day 13), Sydney (Days 18, 25 - 27), Deborah (Days 21, 22), Elizabeth (Day 28), Me (Day 29, put Relinquish twice), Kayla (Day 30), Maxie (Day 31).