Then she rolled onto her back and the laughter stopped, drying up in her throat as she stared, wide-eyed, at the vast ruby eye of the moon.
Now, those of you who have seen the moon may think you know what Jillian saw: may think that you can picture it, shining in the sky above her. The moon is the friendliest of the celestial bodies, after all, glowing warm and white and welcoming, like a friend who wants only to know that all of us are safe in our narrow worlds, our narrow yards, our narrow, well-considered lives. The moon worries. We may not know how we know that, but we know it all the same: that the moon watches, and the moon worries, and the moon will always love us, no matter what.
This moon watched, but that was where the resemblance to the clean and comfortable moon that had watched over the twins all the days of their lives ended. This moon was huge, and red as a ruby somehow set into the night sky, surrounded by the gleaming points of a million stars. Jillian had never in her life seen so many stars. She stared at them as much as at the moon, which seemed to be looking at her with a focus and intensity that she had never noticed before.
Gradually, Jacqueline tired of running, and moved to sit down next to her sister in the flowers. Jillian pointed mutely upward. Jacqueline looked, and frowned, suddenly uneasy.
“The moon is wrong,” she said.
“It’s red,” said Jillian.
“No,” said Jacqueline—who had, after all, been encouraged to sit quietly, to read books rather than play noisy games, to watch. No one had ever thought to ask her to be smart, which was good, in the grand scheme of things: her mother would have been much more likely to ask her to be a little foolish, because foolish girls were more tractable than stubbornly clever ones. Cleverness was a boy’s attribute, and would only get in the way of sitting quietly and being mindful.
Jacqueline had found cleverness all on her own, teasing it out of the silences she found herself marooned in, using it to fill the gaps naturally created by a life lived being good, and still, and patient. She was only twelve years old. There were limits to the things she knew. And yet …
“The moon shouldn’t be that big,” she said. “It’s too far away to be that big. It would have to be so close that it would mess up all the tides and pull the world apart, because gravity.”
“Gravity can do that?” asked Jillian, horrified.
“It could, if the moon were that close,” said Jacqueline. She stood, leaning down to pull her sister along with her. “We shouldn’t be here.” The moon was wrong, and there were mountains in the distance. Mountains. Somehow, she didn’t have a problem with the idea that there was a field and an ocean below the basement, but mountains? That was a step too far.
“The door’s gone,” said Jillian. She had a sprig of some woody purple plant in her hair, like a barrette. It was pretty. Jacqueline couldn’t think of the last time she’d seen her sister wearing something just because it was pretty. “How are we supposed to go home if the door’s gone?”
“If the moon can be wrong, the door can move,” said Jacqueline, with what she hoped would sound like certainty. “We just need to find it.”
“Where?”
Jacqueline hesitated. The ocean was in front of them, big and furious and stormy. The waves would carry them away in an instant, if they got too close. The mountains were behind them, tall and craggy and foreboding. Shapes that looked like castles perched on the highest peaks. Even if they could climb that far, there was no guarantee that the people who lived in castles like grasping hands, high up the slope of a mountain, would ever be friendly toward two lost little girls.
“We can go left or we can go right,” said Jacqueline finally. “You choose.”
Jillian lit up. She couldn’t remember the last time her sister had asked her to choose something, had trusted her not to lead them straight into a mud puddle or other small disaster. “Left,” she said, and grabbed her sister’s hand, and hauled her away across the vast and menacing moor.
*
IT IS IMPORTANT to understand the world in which Jacqueline and Jillian found themselves marooned, even if they would not understand it fully for some time, if ever. And so, the Moors:
There are worlds built on rainbows and worlds built on rain. There are worlds of pure mathematics, where every number chimes like crystal as it rolls into reality. There are worlds of light and worlds of darkness, worlds of rhyme and worlds of reason, and worlds where the only thing that matters is the goodness in a hero’s heart. The Moors are none of those things. The Moors exist in eternal twilight, in the pause between the lightning strike and the resurrection. They are a place of endless scientific experimentation, of monstrous beauty, and of terrible consequences.
Had the girls turned toward the mountains, they would have found themselves in a world washed in snow and pine, where the howls of wolves split the night, and where the lords of eternal winter ruled with an unforgiving hand.
Had the girls turned toward the sea, they would have found themselves in a world caught forever at the moment of drowning, where the songs of sirens lured the unwary to their deaths, and where the lords of half-sunken manors never forgot, or forgave, those who trespassed against them.
But they did neither of those things. Instead, they walked through brush and bracken, pausing occasionally to gather flowers that they had never seen before, flowers that bloomed white as bone, or yellow as bile, or with the soft suggestion of a woman’s face tucked into the center of their petals. They walked until they could walk no more, and when they curled together in their exhaustion, the undergrowth made a lovely mattress, while the overgrowth shielded them from casual view.
The moon set. The sun rose, bringing storm clouds with it. It hid behind them all through the day, so that the sky was never any brighter than it had been when they arrived. Wolves came down from the mountains and unspeakable things came up from the sea, all gathering around the sleeping children and watching them dream the hours away. None made a move to touch the girls. They had made their choice: they had chosen the Moors. Their fate, and their future, was set.
When the moon rose again the beasts of mountain and sea slipped away, leaving Jacqueline and Jillian to wake to a lonely, silent world.