The Forgotten Moon

The elders called it protection, but to me, it felt more like burial. The iron bars stood taller than two men, their joints welded so crudely I could still see the black scorch marks from when they were forged decades ago. The hinges screeched every time the door opened, as though the village itself shuddered at the ritual. And then, once the heavy padlock snapped shut, the silence would return. It was the silence that unnerved me most. By day, the village of Crowden was alive with clatter and noise: blacksmiths hammering sparks into steel, women trading gossip over woven baskets of yams, children skipping through the dust with pebbles rattling in tin cans. But on nights like this, when the moon began its slow climb, round and white as an eye staring from heaven, Crowden held its breath. Torches guttered, shutters slammed, and families huddled together indoors, praying, perhaps, that the sound of claws against iron would not crawl into their dreams. And I, Alaric of no surname, was left alone in the square. The ritual never changed. Four guards would escort me from my hut near the edge of the fields, spears clutched tighter than necessary, as if I might turn rabid at the mere sight of the moon. They’d march me through the crooked streets, past eyes peering from cracks in doorframes. No one spoke to me, not even the children who had once dared toss stones at me before their mothers dragged them inside. The villagers’ gazes slid over me like water over glass, never resting long enough to acknowledge me, never softening with anything resembling humanity. Then the cage. “Quickly,” one of the guards muttered tonight as they pushed me inside. I caught his eye briefly-a young man, hardly older than myself, though the fear twisting his mouth made him look fifty. He avoided my stare after that, fumbling with the padlock until it clicked into place. The others didn’t linger. They never did. The moon was already rising, after all, its pale glow licking the edge of the clouds. And though they insisted the cage was for my safety, they never trusted their own words enough to stay in the square with me once the change began. So, like every month, I was left alone. Alone with the cold. Alone with the moon. Alone with the knowledge that when my body broke and shifted, when bones bent and fur erupted, I would remember nothing come morning. A missing night. A blank page. That was my curse. Other werewolves, in the stories whispered by travelers passing through the market remembered their nights. Some described it as a haze, a blur of sensation and sound, but still theirs. A truth they carried, for better or worse. But me? I remembered only darkness. It was like drowning in sleep. I’d close my eyes as a man, wake as a man, and lose everything in between. The elders told me this was mercy, that it was better not to know what horrors I unleashed when the beast claimed me. Still, a part of me had always wondered if I could just remember, maybe I could prove them wrong. Maybe I wasn’t the monster they believed I was. Maybe I was something else. The moon broke free of the clouds then, silvery light spilling into the square. My chest tightened. I gripped the bars. The iron bit into my palms. I wanted to scream, to curse the gods who had marked me, to demand answers of the stars but there was no one to hear me, no one who cared. And then the pain came. It was fire, pure and merciless, searing through muscle and marrow. My spine cracked like a whip, jaws splitting wider than any human mouth should, nails bursting into claws that gouged crescent moons into the floor of the cage. My heart thundered, wild and furious, and every breath became a growl. The world shrank to light, pain, and hunger. Then, mercifully blackness. I woke to the taste of iron in my mouth. The morning sun was warm against my cheek, too warm for how clammy my skin felt. My clothes or what was left of them hung in tatters, barely clinging to my frame. My body ached as if I’d been beaten with stones. That was normal. The cage door standing wide open was not. I froze. The padlock lay twisted on the ground, as though something or someone had forced it apart with impossible strength. The door gaped like a wound, the hinges bent. I sat up, heart hammering, and that’s when I noticed my hands. Dried blood crusted beneath my fingernails. Not mine. The scent was sharp and foreign, setting my teeth on edge. My stomach churned. I wiped my hands against the dirt, desperate to rid myself of the evidence, but the red-brown stain clung stubbornly to the creases of my skin. “What happened?” I whispered to no one. A laugh echoed in my mind, cruel and mocking. But it was only memory, my memory, perhaps, of the beast that wore my skin. No. The elders would have told me if something had gone wrong. They always did. Sometimes they described claw marks on walls, livestock torn apart, or once, long ago, an old hunter nearly mauled before he escaped with scars. But this? This was different. The cage had never failed before. I staggered to my feet, every bone protesting. My head throbbed with the rhythm of a thousand drums. Still, I pushed the door wider, staring at the square. Empty. Silent. Too silent. That’s when I saw them. Eyes. Watching me from the shadows between buildings. Villagers. Men, women, even children - faces I recognized but never truly knew. They stood half-hidden behind shutters and fences, their gazes sharp, burning with something I couldn’t name. Fear, yes, but something else too. Guilt. I opened my mouth to speak, to demand answers, but before I could, the elders arrived. Three of them, cloaked in deep green, the color of old pine. They moved quickly, too quickly for their age, and their leader Elder Myrren, his beard streaked with white, spread his hands as though to soothe a wild animal. “Alaric,” he said, voice low and careful. “You’re awake. Good. Come with us now. There’s nothing to fear.” Nothing to fear. I glanced again at my hands, at the blood beneath my nails. My throat tightened. But before I could speak, before I could demand why the cage door was open, Elder Myrren’s sharp eyes locked onto mine. And in them, I saw a warning. Do not ask. That morning, they told me nothing. Not about the broken cage. Not about the blood. Not about the way the villagers refused to meet my gaze as they scurried through the square. The elders only said the transformation had passed uneventfully, that no one had been harmed, that I was safe. But I knew they were lying. And that night, when I returned to my hut, a folded piece of parchment waited on my doorstep. There was no name written upon it. Only a crude paw print pressed into the wax seal. The seal broke easily between my fingers, crumbling like dried blood. The parchment inside smelled faintly of smoke and pine sap, as though it had been written in the woods and carried through the night. My hands trembled—not from fear exactly, but from the weight of the unknown, from the sense that whatever lay within would tilt my world on its axis. The message was brief. You were not alone last night. No signature, no name. Only that line, followed by another crude mark of a paw pressed in ink, smudged at the edges where the parchment had been folded. My throat went dry. I turned the page over, searching for more, but there was nothing. No hint of who had written it, no explanation of what it meant. Only that single sentence, each word heavy as lead. You were not alone. The cage door had been broken. The blood had not been mine. And now this letter—this cruel, careful letter. I wanted to burn it, to feed it to the hearth and pretend it had never found me. But my hands refused. Instead, I folded it back along the same creases and tucked it beneath the loose board under my bed, the one place I kept the scraps of books and forbidden notes I’d managed to scavenge over the years. And then I sat there, listening. Crowden was never quiet, not truly. The woods had their whispers, the wind their sighs, the houses their groans. But tonight, every sound seemed sharpened, as though the village itself leaned close to hear my reaction. Somewhere far off, a dog barked once, then fell silent. My ears rang with the echo of the words. You were not alone last night. The question clawed at me until I could no longer sit still. I rose, pacing the narrow hut, dragging my fingers along the rough-hewn walls until splinters bit my skin. A hundred possibilities spun in my head, each darker than the last. Had I harmed someone? Or was it some cruel jest, crafted by villagers who had long since branded me monster? But the seal. The paw print. No child would dare mock me so boldly, and no villager would risk the wrath of the elders with something so pointed. Whoever had written this wanted me to know. And they wanted me to remember. The following days passed in a haze of dread. I worked the fields as I always did, chopping wood, repairing fences, fetching water from the stream. Outwardly, nothing had changed. But the villagers’ eyes lingered longer on me now, their stares sharper, their whispers cut short when I approached. Mothers pulled their children closer. And the elders watched most of all. Elder Myrren crossed my path thrice that week, though he claimed coincidence. His gaze followed me with hawk-like precision, searching for cracks in my composure. Each time, his parting words were the same: “Be at peace, Alaric. The moon has no claim on you in daylight.” But even he could not hide the tremor in his voice when he spoke it. At night, I returned to my hut and checked beneath the bedboard. The letter remained where I had hidden it, paw print and all, waiting like a buried bone. I touched it only once, running my fingers over the ink, and felt a strange heat rise in my skin. It was not the last letter. Three nights later, I found another. This one placed on my windowsill, the seal gleaming faintly in the pale light of the moon. My heart pounded as I broke it open, half-dreading, half-craving the words within. The cage does not hold you. It never has. That was all. I sank onto my bed, the parchment trembling in my hands. My mouth tasted of iron again, though this time no blood stained my nails. The letters were a taunt, a chain of breadcrumbs dragging me toward some truth the elders would rather bury. And yet beneath the fear, something else stirred. A flicker of defiance, of hunger. If the cage did not hold me… then what did? I dreamed again that night. Not of blackness, but of the woods. I ran through them on all fours, the earth damp and alive beneath my claws. The air burned sweet and sharp in my lungs, every sound a symphony of detail—the crackle of a mouse beneath leaves, the flutter of an owl’s wings high above, the quickening pulse of something larger, prey, running just ahead. But there was someone beside me. I could not see them clearly, only the flash of silver fur in the moonlight, the echo of a howl harmonizing with mine. We moved together, stride for stride, as though born for this chase. Their presence burned electric in my blood, binding me in a way no words could explain. When I woke, my chest ached with longing. By the week’s end, the whispers in Crowden had grown unbearable. Children stared openly when I passed, elders lowered their voices but not their eyes, and even the guards avoided my shadow. Something had changed that night in the cage, something they all knew and I did not. But someone wanted me to learn. Someone had seen what the others sought to bury. And as I stood alone at the edge of Whispering Woods, the second letter folded tight in my fist, I felt the truth press against my ribs like a beast clawing to be freed. The cage was never meant to protect me. It was meant to blind me.