Though I searched, no dwelling could I find. I saw the fallen lock and the two remaining. They, though rusted, seemed secure. I noted how the trees that twisted above and about me were oddly flourishing, even though it was winter. Perhaps their nourishment was drawn from that ground.
I soon left that place and stood again atop the hill. Looking down I could see nothing but the waving branches of trees, covering the graveyard on Mabbs Hill and wherever Mara dwelt.
Something odd struck me, for I realized that all the time I had been down there, by the cemetery, no noise of birds had I heard. But there was no leisure to confirm that, for I had a train to catch and so I set off, at a run, down the hill to the station.
The evening was bright with starlight. I stood on the bridge above the creek, watching the moon’s reflection break in silver shards amid the flow, and I became lost in a reverie. Hearing a soft voice, I turned to see a girl staring intently at the moon-glade.
“Give it back to me, moon-witch. I can see you there, laughing at me.”
It was the girl whom I had seen crying the night before. She leant over the bridge to throw a stone into the stream and the moon’s face there shattered into a thousand pieces.
“Killed you!” she cried triumphantly. But her voice changed to a sob as the moon gathered up its shards to grin sardonically back at us.
She hurried away past me, and I held out my hand to stay her, asking if I could be of aid. She was a pretty thing, or would have been but for the look of utter desolation marring her face. Her red hair had been sheared short and uneven, sticking out at odd, uncombed angles about her head, and I was again reminded of one condemned.
“It’s a mask.” She pointed to the water below. “I know, the moon-witch told me. That grave-woman who said I was a moonchild… me who was just me mum’s love child. The moon’s a thief!” She screamed these words and buried her face in her hands. “I’m a dead one now because of what she took from me.”
“What did she take?” I asked gently.
Her eyes peeped at me through parted fingers and she giggled, as though I had said something amusing.
“You’ve had yours taken too, I can tell. But you don’t care. I hope you was happy with what you got for it. I didn’t get nothing, nothing at all. I want it back.”
Her distracted face was bathed white as a mask by the moonlight and she held out her hands towards me, as though making an offering. I looked and saw a moth sitting upon her palm, its wings fluttering ever so slightly. There was something unusual about it and I looked close.
“It’s a strange thing, but the moon is really under the ground and no one knows that except me and you and her.”
I could not look into the girl’s eyes, so intently did they watch me as she spoke.
Then, lowering her hands, she fled away, across the bridge. Whether she still held the moth, or had dropped the thing, I did not know. But uselessly I searched the stone bridge, washed grey by moonlight, for it; and as I sought, the girl’s voice was raised in a distant, wistful song:
“I am just a love-child, “Lost in moon dreams am I.”
Giving up my search for the moth, I listened for a space of time to the girl’s song. It seemed that, though gone, she was still close by, but invisible, a ghost conjured by the moon to trill for its amusement.
I forced myself away and up the hill. My meeting with the girl had been distressing, bringing more disturbing thoughts and memories to my mind, for all that day the woman Mara had haunted me. Thoughts of her sensual mouth sucking on mine, biting with those sharp white teeth so hard that I bled. Strange and lurid sensations ran through me at the memory of it.
Mabbs Hill shone before me, lit by moonlight. A heavy frost sparkled the ground, a purse of silver thrown to Earth by the moon. No living thing had I seen since the girl and she, poor thing, bore the certain mark of one who soon would not be.
A footfall in a rime of frost sounded behind me, ominous as the snap of breaking bone.
I turned to see the hooded figure that followed.
“Is this not well met by moonlight?”
Her voice thrilled me as moonlight and starlight played with silver fire on the frost.
We stood regarding each other and the hood fell back. Eyes, dark as grapes, captured me, and her feline smile beguiled.
“I knew that we would meet again,” she sighed, a sound almost a moan of pleasure as she looked up to let the moon bathe her face. “How I love the moon and so do you. I saw how you gazed at her last night. She is my mother. Ah! The mist and the moonlight, they are my elements.”
“I have already met with a moonchild tonight,” I said, “who told me that the moon is beneath the earth.”
“That pretty little thing did not wish to give me a little pretty thing that I desired from her. Soon she will not be so pretty.” Mara looked searchingly at me. “A moonchild indeed! Perhaps she is your wish-child? Would you rather her than me? Surely not!”
“What did you take from her, Mara? She said that the moon was a thief.”
“Her hope, her youth, her flowering beauty. Her red hair was so long and lovely that I grew jealous of it and made her shear the tresses. Such a silly girl, so easy to beguile. She would never have missed her pretty little soul and I would have sent her out into the world to seek others for me.”
A great fear seized me. Instinctively I released the catch on my swordstick and eased the blade slightly from its sheath. My action caused Mara some amusement, for she laughed.
“I shall leave you if you are so afraid and must draw your weapon on little me. But I promise that no great harm will befall you, on this night, unless you so wish it.”
The blade slid back into its sheath as Mara’s cold hand lightly brushed my face. She then took my hand and we walked up Mabbs Hill, at the top of which we looked down on the city below, the lights of which blazed — a town of fire lit by the flames of Hell — which, as the poet said, is a city much like London.
“All this could be yours,” whispered Mara the temptress. “Better than knowledge, Herr Doctor Crescentius of the mouldy old books.”
“No! There is nothing better than knowledge,” I denied her.
“Shall I call you Faustus?” she mocked. “There is something better than that. Did not your hero sigh for the love of Helen?”
What was knowledge compared to the mystery of Mara’s body? Mara, who could read my thoughts. For, secretly, I would often beguile myself with the conceit of being a new Faust, and learn the secrets of the natural world and of that occult one which is so close but yet so far from us.
Cold hand in mine, she led me down the path that led under the hill.
“You know who I am,” Mara teased. “But you have put it from your mind. A wise fool indeed.”
“You are Lilith, you are Hecate.”
“Just Mara,” she said, as clumsily I tried to kiss her and she easily evaded me.
A strange silver light, like a will-o’-the-wisp, danced before us as down, ever down we went, showing a way through what else would have been grave-dark. For it seemed that walls of earth surrounded us, until we came to the gate of that city of the dead, beneath the hill.
Mara fell into my arms at last, like one surrendering to a deep need whose satisfaction had been long denied to them. Her lips burnt mine with their cold as she bit and sucked, and a feeling of release from all care took hold of me as I let her drink.
“It is gone already.”
Mara stepped back, out of my arms, and I saw the smear of blood on her lips.
“My soul, you mean. That is long gone,” I answered truly. “Taken by another, freely given by me. Why, even your little moonchild knew that… recognized a similar loss in herself, perhaps.”
A veil clouded my sight as I spoke, and Mara slipped away like a shadow.